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THE CONDUCT 



OF 



THE ADMINISTRATION. 



REPRINTED FROM 

THE BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER AND PATRIOT. 



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S BOSTON: 

STIMPSON & CLAPP, 72 WASHINGTON STREET. 

J. E, Hinckley & Co., Printers, 14 Water Street. 

1832. 




THE 



CONDUCT OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 



In less than two months from this time, the country will pass 
through an important political crisis. A community of more 
than twelve million souls will be called on to elect, by a nearly 
universal suffrage, a chief Executive Magistrate, who is to exer- 
cise over them most of the powers that belong in other countries 
to the office of an hereditary sovereign. A proceeding of this 
kind is entirely without parallel in the previews history of the 
world, and were it to happen in some remote foreign nation, 
would be justly entitled to profound and anxious attention, as a 
mere experiment in the science of civil polity. When we recol- 
lect that this great and curious experiment is to be performed 
upon the living body politic of which we are ourselves members; 
that the fortunes of our country, and with them our own and 
those of our friends and families are involved to a considerable 
extent, in its results ; — we shall perhaps consider it not unnatural 
to suspend for a i'ew moments the ordinary routine of private 
business, and inquire with some seriousness into the nature of the 
duties which the crisis in question will devolve upon us as elect- 
ors and citizens. 

We have said that there is nothing in the history of the world 
at all parallel to this singular and imposing scene. There have 
been, no doubt, and still are, other communities organized on the 
principle of an elective chief magistracy. Such was the case with 
the great Republics of Rome and Carthage, with most of the 
democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy, with Switzer- 
land and Holland, and at one period with the unfortunate King- 
dom of Poland. But in all these countries the state of the com- 



munity and the form under which the elective principle was ap- 
plied, were so totally different that it is impossible for us to turn 
them to any practical account as precedents : the case is entirely 
new. 

No precise parallel to it can be found, even in the preceding 
elections of the same kind, that have taken place among ourselves. 
The state of the country changes so rapidly that in the short 
space of four years new forces are introduced into our political 
machinery of which it is impossible to calculate beforehand the 
operation or the effects. At the first election we had only thir- 
teen States ; we have now four and twenty. — When Mr. Jeffer- 
son was chosen President we had less that six million inhabitants; 
we, have now by the census more than twelve, and in reality 
more than thirteen. At all the earlier elections our largest cities 
did not contain more than twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants ; 
they now contain more than two hundred thousand, and have 
begun to assume in consequence a different physiognomy, and 
to exercise a different action on community. Before the year 
1800, the West was a vast wilderness ; it now holds the balance 
of political power among the States, and expects at no distant 
day to sway the sceptre. Since the last election it has received 
from the new census a considerable augmentation of strength. 
These changes and various others hardly less important, to which 
we cannot even allude, have materially varied the political as- 
pect of the country from one election to another, and will con- 
tinue to render them all, as they successfully occur, operations 
of a new impression, involving elements that have never been in 
action before, and of which the nature and effects can of course 
be foreseen with very little certainty. 

This indisputable fact gives an additional and alarming inter- 
est to a crisis already in its very nature sufficiently important. — 
We are like mariners compelled to pass through a dangerous 
channel, where the sands are continually shifting, and where the 
charts tl)at have been formed upon the experience of former voy- 
ages are necessarily more or less incorrect. Under these circum- 
stances, it would be madness to indulge in a false security. We 
must be on the alert, and keep a bright look-out for breakers, or 
we shall certainly get into shoal water. 

We are met, however, at the outset by the objection, that it is 
after all of little importance what individual fills the office of 
President. One i)erson, it is said, will go through the routine of 
this place about as well as another; or if there be a difference, 
it will not be sufficiently important to affect in any way the great 
interests of the country. We are now so flourishing and pros- 
perous that we can get along perfectly well under any chief 



magistrate, and it is not worth while for the citizens to leave 
their own concerns for the sake of interfering in an election, of 
which the result is necessarily a matter of indifference. 

Such language, though employed in most cases as a cover 
for selfishness, indolence or disguised Jacksonism, is occasionally 
heard from the mouths of Vv'ell-meaning men. No error can be 
more ruinous in a government like ours, the very existence of 
which depends upon the constant vigilance of the people. The 
administration of the government is in fact tlie great concern of 
the community and of all its members. Upon it depend the 
maintenance of the public peace — the security of the life, prop- 
erty and happiness of the individual citizen. No temporal in- 
terest can be named in comparison with it for importance and 
magnitude. Education, for example, which is often and justly 
represented as a most important concern, is nevertheless entirely 
secondary and subordinate to that of Government. Education 
provides for the improvement of a future generation : Govern- 
ment secures the existence and prosperous condition of the pre- 
sent, v/hich involves of course those of all that are to follow. — 
Of what use is it to provide accomplished actors, to figure some 
thirty years hence on the great theatre of society, if in the mean 
time, by the effect of misgovernment, the edifice itself is shaken 
to its basis and tumbles in fragments about our ears? Govern- 
ment therefore is the great and paramount concern. Religion 
alone, v.-hich provides for the wants of man considered as an im- 
mortal being, is of more importance than any merely temporal 
interest : and it is the chief practical injunction of Religion that 
we are not to wrap ourselves up in a cold, heartless, exclusive 
attention to our personal affairs, but to discharge with zeal, in- 
dustry, vigilance and effect, our social duties. 

In periods of general political prosperity, we are apt to under- 
value the importance of Government, and to neglect the cares 
and duties that belong to it, just as in a healthy and vigorous 
state of the body we are apt to underrate the importance of tem- 
perance and exercise. " Why," says the vigorous and athletic 
youth, "should I trouble myself with any of these idle restric- 
tions? I have an excellent constitution: no matter what I do : 
I can bear any thing." Let him try this system for two or three 
years — give way without restraint or reflection to his vicious ap- 
petites, and what will be the consequence? Bis animal func- 
tions are all disordered. Disease visits him in twenty loathsome 
shapes. He must now withdraw his attention from every other 
occupation, and direct it entirely to the vain and hopeless labor 
of attempting to recover the blessing, which he undervalued be- 
fore, and which he has now lost forever. 



Just so it is with the body politic. Every thing flourishes: — 
we have an excellent constitution : — we can bear any thing : — 
no matter who is President. Thus says the optimist; and, with- 
out even taking the trouble to vote, he goes on quietly increas- 
ing the number of his dollars. In the mean time, the agents of 
evil never slumber, and the helm which the well-meaning citizen 
is too indolent to grasp, falls into the hands of the Hills, the Ken- 
dalls and the Lewises, who make a President to their minds, and 
then make themselves Vice Presidents over him, under the style 
and title of the Kitchen Cabinet. Let this go on for a few years 
and what follows? — Proscription — Confiscation — internal dissen- 
sion, foreign and domestic war. The optimist, who could not 
afford an hour or a dollar for the public affairs, must shell out 
his dollars by thousands, and pour out his heart's blood to the 
last drop — for what ? In the hopeless attempt to recover the po- 
litical well-being which, once lost, can no more be restored than 
the health of the natural body. 

Look at France. When was there ever a country to all out- 
ward appearance more flourishing and prosperous, than the king- 
dom of France on the 1st of June, 1830? The King, Charles 
X., who was then sovereign there as the people are now sove- 
reign in this country, thought that he could do any thing, and 
wisely turned out a very competent set of Ministers, in order to 
introduce another under his natural son. Prince Polignac. Po- 
lignac, conceiving in his turn that in so prosperous a condition 
of affairs he could do any thing; without dano-er, amused himself 
and his royal master by repealing the liberty of the press, and 
the right of suflTrage. What followed ? Less than three years 
have since elapsed. Charles X. and his family are scattered to 
the four winds — Polignac and his associates are locked up in 
dungeons. In all these cases, the worthless tools by whom the 
mischief has been done are the first victims; and if the matter 
stopped here there would be no great cause for regret. But this 
is not all. France — Europe, are plunged into almost hopeless 
confusion. The streets of Paris have been repeatedly the theatre 
of carnage, and are now, with several of the Departments, under 
martial law. The peacefid pursuits of industry are all suspended. 
War has broken out in various quarters ; and every sign portends 
the occurrence of another of those general convulsions which 
destroy in a great measure the peace and happiness of the civ- 
ilized world, for at least one generation. 

Are the people of the United States exempt from the operation 
of the causes which determine the fortunes of men and nations 
in other parts of the world ? No. If we permit our most im- 
portant alFairs to be managed for any length of time by corrupt 



and incompetent persons, we shall certainly suffer for it. This 
is the law of nature ; and nothing but a miraculous intervention 
of Providence, which is never vouchsafed to the indolent and 
careless, can save us from its operation. If we madly entrust 
the command of our grand and admirable political Steam-Boat, 
with all its complicated machinery, to a set of ignorant, passion- 
ate, reckless officers, whose chief recommendation is a talent for 
railing and swearing, we may possibly make one or two trips 
without accident, but at no distant time the EXPLOSION 
MUST COME. The wretches whose presumption and folly 
will have occasioned it, if it do happen, will be first blown 
to atoms; but with them will also perish the splendid bark, the 
troops of passengers, and the high hopes of political improve- 
ment throughout the world, that have so long been connected 
with the fortunes of the star-spangled banner of Western Liberty. 

Far from being powerless, the President of the United States 
is the most effective and important, as he is the highest in dig- 
nity of our political functionaries. It is he who gives in the last 
resort, the impulse to almost every movement of the political 
machine. The mischiefs which have already resulted from the 
mal-administration of the present incumbent in that office, are 
but too apparent; and he must be a bold man, who, after a care- 
ful and dispassionate survey of our present political condition, 
will undertake to say with any assurance, that the constitution 
of the country would hold out four years longer under the same 
management. For ourselves, though not habitually of a despond- 
ing disposition, though generally rather apt to indulge in favor- 
able views of the future, we are compelled to express our decided 
conviction, that the re-election of Jackson for another term, 
would be fatal to the Union. 

The crisis we are approaching, is, therefore, deeply interest- 
ing. It brings with it high responsibilities, and solemn duties. — 
It becomes us to reflect maturely beforehand upon the course 
we shall take, and not lightly, or from any merely party or per- 
sonal prejudice, cast a vote, which may have so material an in- 
fluence on the public welfare. 

The partisans of Gen. Jackson have proposed him as a can- 
didate for re-election. That ho should have given his consent 
to this — that he should even have almost publicly solicited a 
nomination after all his previous protestations of a contrary char- 
acter, is one among a great number of gross inconsistencies, 
which prove but too plainly his want of any fixed principles of 
conduct. Since, however, he has consented to come before the 
public a second time, and is seriously held up by a large, if not 
respectable, party, it become.s necessary to examine his preten- 



8 

sions, and to survey the course of his administration, which, for 
the honor of the country, it would be much more agreeable to 
consign at once to oblivion. We propose, accordingly, in sev- 
eral following papers, to consider successively, 

1. The qualifications of Gen. Jackson for the Chief Magistracy 
of the Union. 

2. The means by which he rose to that high dignity at the 
last election — and 

3. The manner in which he has discharged his duties as Pre- 
sident, during the current term. 

It will appear, from the result of our inquiries, that he is utterly 
disqualified for the place, and that it is the bounden duty of every 
patriotic citizen to lay aside all minor considerations, and join 
heart and hand in the great and generous effort which is now 
making in all quarters to defeat his re-election. 



CHAPTER II. 



CHARACTER OF JACKSON— MEANS BY WHICH HE WAS 

ELECTED. 

We propose, in the present chapter, to consider the qualifica- 
tions of General Jackson for the Presidency of the United States, 
and the means by which he was elevated to that office at the last 
election. 

General Jackson — before his nomination as a candidate for 
the Presidency — was known to the public as a daring, reckless 
and successful military commander. In his campaigns against 
the British and the Indians, he had repeatedly set at defiance 
the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the received maxims of 
public law, and the common feelings of humanity. The people 
had been rather disposed, in consideration of the substantial 
benefits which had accrued to the country from his military 
operations, to attribute these excesses to impulse and igno- 
rance, rather than to a deliberate design to do wrong; but, 
taken in connexion with the known violence and rudeness of 
his private life, they served distinctly to characterize the man. 
In civil and political aff'airs, he had shown — though often placed 
in conspicuous positions — an absolute nullity. We allude to 
his private qualities no farther, than to say, that he was entirely 
destitute of the ordinary accomplishments of a well-bred gentle- 
man, and incapable of writing a common English letter with 
tolerable correctness. 



That such a person was wholly unfit for the office of President 
of the United States, is a proposition too plain to admit of ar- 
gument. But this is not enough. We may safely go much 
farther, and say with perfect truth, that of all the citizens in any 
way known to the public, General Jackson was the only one, 
whose election might fairly be regarded as dangerous, and whom 
it was particularly expedient not to place in the President's 
chair. There was undoubtedly a choice among the prominent 
men of the country, some of whom would probably have transact- 
ed the business more acceptably than others ; but no other 
candidate could have been mentioned, of whom it would not have 
been said at once that his election — whether expedient or not — 
was at least not dangerous. Of General Jackson this could not 
be said. The elevation to power of a bold, able, and unprinci- 
pled "Military Chieftain" has been uniformly fatal to the con- 
stitution of every free State in which it has occurred. If we have 
not already found our Cromwell, we owe it to the winter on 
General Jackson's head, and not to his moderation or our own 
prudence. At the preceding election by the House of Repre- 
sentatives, Mr. Clay, with his usual clear and strong sense, had 
perfectly apprehended the nature of the case, and stated it dis- 
tinctly in his letter to Judge Brooke. He did not choose to 
commit the guardianship of our civil institutions to a daring and 
reckless soldier. For this exercise — we will not say of patriot- 
ism or sagacity — but of ordinary common sense, he was brand- 
ed by the partisans of Jackson with corruption. It was appar- 
ent at the time to every one, not absolutely blinded by party 
prejudice, that any otlier course than the one he took would 
indeed have argued corruption, and that of the grossest char- 
acter. 

General Jackson was therefore not only destitute of all the 
qualifications and accomplishments necessary for the place, but 
was, by particular circumstances, positively disqualified for it ; — 
was in fact, as we have said, the only man in the country whose 
elevation would be actually dangerous, and whom it was there- 
fore particularly expedient not to place in the Presidency. By 
what fatality then did it happen, that this most enlightened and 
thinking people should have fixed precisely upon him as the 
most proper person for the office ? The fact must undoubtedly 
be attributed in part to the sort of caprice which sometimes pre- 
vails in popular, as well as in arbitrary governments. King De- 
mus, like other sovereigns, has his moments of wantonness, 
in which he plays tricks as fantastic and as mischievous as any of 
theirs. The result in question was however mainly owing to the 
intrigues of artful men, who found it convenient to employ 
2 



10 

General Jackson's military reputation as a machine for advanc- 
ing their own selfish projects. 

The General was first presented to the public as a candidate, 
by the local feeling of -his own State. With this we find no 
fault, and are rather disposed to regret that there is not more of 
a similar spirit in some other quarters, where it would probably 
be applied with more judgment and better effect. The adhesion 
of Pennsylvania was the first event, that gave any importance to 
the nomination which, till then, had been looked upon as a sort 
of bad joke. By what influence Pennsylvania, previously pledg- 
ed to Mr. Calhoun, was induced to take this somerset, is, we 
believe, even now not very distinctly known. It was certainly 
not done at the instance of Mr. Calhoun, who was as much sur- 
prised as all the rest of the world, when he first learned the fact 
through the newspapers. Whatever may have led to it, it was 
certainly the first thing which gave to Jackson the least impor- 
tance as a candidate. — For this timely declaration in his favor, 
and for her subsequent steady adhesion to his cause, the Gene- 
ral is now showing his gratitude to Pennsylvania by striking a 
death-blow at her most valuable institutions, and her favorite 
schemes of policy. 

The nomination having thus acquired a title to attention, was 
encouraged in some of the Southern States, more with a view 
of effecting a diversion of votes from other candidates than from 
a real wish for the General's success. In this way, however, he 
was brought into the House of Representatives as the candidate 
having the highest number of votes. To pretend that the House 
were for this reason bound to elect him President, is of course 
absurd. If the Constitution intended that the candidate having 
the highest number of votes should of course be President, why 
did not the Constitution say, that a plurality, and not a majority 
of votes, should decide the election? It is really wonderful, that 
a statesman so distinguished as Mr. Calhoun should publicly 
commit himself to an opinion so clearly and palpably untenable. 
The House were obviously at full liberty to select from the three 
candidates the one whom they preferred. — Mr. Crawford was 
disqualified by the state of his health, and the choice really lay 
between Mr. Adams and General Jackson : — that is, between 
the only man in the country, whom it was on every account par- 
ticularly expedient not to make President, and one of those citi- 
zens, who were on every account best qualified, — were his pri- 
vate manners a little more gracious, perhaps we might say with 
justice, the one, who of all the citizens, was best qualified, — for 
this great office. It did not require all the lofty genius, far- 
sighted sagacity, and wide expanse of views, that belong to Mr. 



11 

Clay, to decide such a question. Any man of common sense 
and common integrity would have settled it in ten minutes, as 
he did. The people were fully satisfied with the decision. 
The administration of Mr. Adams more than justified the expec- 
tations of his warmest friends ; and if the voice of inveterate 
local prejudice and personal ambition could have been stifled, 
and the real public opinion of the country been allowed to de- 
clare itself, he would have been re-elected President, four years 
after, without a dissenting vote. 

This, however, was not to be expected. Poor human nature 
is the same at all times and in all countries, and on this occasion 
we saw an exhibition of some of her least attractive features. 
Before the new administration had commenced operations, it 
was openly declared, by the fanatical partisans of the Military 
Chieftain, that they should be put down were they as pure as 
the angels in heaven. Perceiving that a desperate struggle 
would be made for Jackson by this blind and reckless faction, 
the (Political leaders who aimed to succeed Mr. Adams in the 
presidency thought it safer to attach their fortunes to Jackson, 
whom they supposed to possess a great personal popularity, 
than to Mr. Adams, who as an Eastern man, and his father's 
son, was likely to encounter the strong and deeply-rooted preju- 
dices of a large section of the country. — Under this persuasion, 
Mr. Van Buren, who had previously acted as the chief manager 
of the Crawford party, and Mr. Calhoun, then strong at the 
South in his high station and the sreat talents of himself and his 
partisans, if not in a wide reach of territorial influence, sunk for 
a time their conflicting personal pretensions, and formed a com- 
hination to defeat the re-election of Mr. Adams, and to bring in 
General Jackson as his successor. 

When we compare the respective pretensions of these two 
persons, and recollect that their characters were perfectly well 
known to the men most active in forming this combination, we 
are compelled to say that we doubt whether the history of the 
world furnishes an example of a more unprincipled and corrupt 
intrigue. It is painful — it is mortifying — it degrades our view 
of human nature, to think that such men as Mr. Van Bureri, and 
especially Mr. Calhoun, whom we look upon as personally in 
every respect a much superior man to the other, — should have 
engaged in it. Both will find to their cost that a plain, manly, 
upright policy would have served their purpose much better. 
Had Mr. Calhoun pursued such a course from the first, we have 
reason to believe that he would have been appointed secretary 
of state by Mr. Adams. In that case he would have followed 
Mr. Clay in the Presidency. — His prospects are now completely 



12 

desperate, and he has nothing to depend upon for his future con- 
sequence but the " sad cure," such as it is, of NulHfication. 
The loss of such a man is a public misfortune. Van Bureu — 
but of this man, his character and his prospects, we shall speak 
hereafter. 

The combination thus formed effected its object by means not 
less corrupt and unprincipled, than the views in which it had 
its origin. The wisest measures were met in the halls of Con- 
gress by a bitterness and virulence of opposition which contrasts 
singularly enough with the easy acquiescence in the same 
quarter in the open violations of the Constitution and laws by 
the present Executive. But the great organ was the Press ; 
and the means employed through the Press to undermine the 
administration were chiefly of two kinds — FALSE PRE- 
TENCES and PERSONAL SLANDER. 

1. FALSE PRETENCES.— The adherents of Jackson as- 
sumed for themselves the exclusive title of the Republican Party, 
and denounced the administration as Federalists and aristocrats. 
By continually harping upon this string, they probably did more to 
shake the confidence of the people than in any other way. They 
knew perfectly well that the assertion was false. The Fed- 
eralists had ceased, since the war, to act as a party. The five 
gentlemen who had appeared as candidates at the preceding elec- 
tion, Messrs. Adams, Jackson, Crawford, Clay and Calhoun, were 
all connected with the Republican party, and had enjoyed its 
confidence for years. There was no Federal party nor Federal 
candidate in the country. The assertion was therefore grossly 
false : in the mouths of those who made it was not merely false 
but BASE and mean. When the Republican administration were 
struggling with almost insuperable difficulties, Mr. Adams had 
given them the weight of his name, talents, and influence. He 
had done more than any individual in the country to help them 
honorably out of the war. In taking this course, he had incurred 
a good deal of ill-will with former political friends whom he had 
been obliged to oppose. To those who retained the feelings 
and prejudices of the old Federal party there was not a man in 
the country so obnoxious as Mr. Adams. Such was the person 
whom Republican editors, after receiving the benefit of his co- 
operation and services in the most difficult times, did not scruple 
to denounce as an opponent. It would be vain to expect any 
great generosity of feeling from the common herd of partisan 
politicians; but ingratitude for benefits received is after all one 
of the basest and blackest traits that can disgrace the human 
character. Ingraium si dixeris, omnia dicis. 

False, base, and mean as it was, the pretence did more, as we 



1 



o 



have said, than any other single cause to shake the confidence 
otthe people. When urged by the leading Republican papers, 
as it was in some of the states, particularly in New Hampshire 
and Maine, it had an appearance of plausibility, and produced 
effect. The other great instrument employed by the party, hardly 
less effectual and certainly not more honorable than the one that 
we have mentioned, was 

2. PERSONAL SLANDER.—Slander is undoubtedly one 
of the crying sins of this nation. Next to intemperance in the 
use of liquor, it may be looked upon as our chief national vice. 
The toleration of it to the extent to which it is carried, is 
the darkest shade in the present state of civilization among us, 
although it is one that has escaped the attention of the 
wiseacres, male and female, who annually come from Europe 
to spy out the nakedness of our land. It will be absolutely ne- 
cessary, before long, that well-meaning citizens should form a 
general combination throughout the country for the suppression 
of this odious vice — like that which has been formed with so 
much success for the suppression of intemperance ; if we mean 
to escape the severe judgments that Providence inflicts upon us, 
as a punishment for it, in the elevation of corrupt and wicked 
rulers. The extent to which it was carried by the Jackson party 
during the administration of Mr. Adams, is almost incredible. 
From the General himself, who did not scruple to join in the 
charge of corruption against his competitor — the man whom he 
had emphatically described as a friend in need — the man to 
whom he had been indebted, at the most critical periods of his 
career, for more than life — from General Jackson himself, down 
to the meanest village editor that barked in his train, the uni- 
versal staple of attack was personal slander. To draw out the 
falsehoods that were then circulated from the oblivion to which 
they have long been consigned, would on every account be worse 
than useless. One, however, deserves to be remembered for its 
uncommon atrocity, and stamped as a perpetual brand upon the 
forehead of its guilty and infamous author. The President of 
the United States, a man remarkable for the purity of his life 
and conversation, and his lady, a matron of spotless character, 
the father and mother of a virtuous family, were publicly charged 
in print by a vile pamphleteer, with having made their home, 
while abroad, a scene of prostitution. Did the party disavow 
this disgusting calumny ? Did they expel the unmanly author 
of it from their ranks, fix a note of infamy upon him, and set 
him adrift, to wander about like Cain, a marked man upon the 
face of the earth ? Far from it. After the outrage had been 
fully exposed on the floor of the House of Representatives, Gen- 



14 

eral Jackson nominated the foul calumniator to a lucrative and 
honorable post in the executive department of the Government. 
When the Senate of the United States, to their everlasting honor, 
rejected, by an almost unanimous vote, the disgraceful nomina- 
tion, the party at home took up the slanderer, and made him, 
as if in mockery, a member of the body that had just set upon 
him the seal of deserved reprobation. There he still remains — 
a monument of the utter political degradation of the state of 
New Hampshire. 

Such were the means by which the election of Gen. Jackson 
was brought about, and such were his qualifications for the 
Chief Magistracy of the Union. The course of his administra- 
tion corresponded entirely with the expectations which, under 
such circumstances, would naturally have been formed of it, as 
will amply appear in the following chapters. 



CHAPTER III. 

FORMATION OF THE CABINET. 

We have seen, in the preceding chapter, that General Jackson 
was, and is, utterly disqualified by his personal character and 
previous military career for the office of President : — that his 
election was the result of the intrigues of political leaders, who 
employed his popularity as a machine for the advancement of 
their own selfish projects ; and that the means by which it was 
effected were chiefly False Pretences and Personal Slan- 
der. We propose to treat in the present article, of the manner 
in which he constituted his Cabinet. 

The General's total incapacity to discharge the duties apper- 
taining to the Presidency was hardly denied even by his own 
partisans ; but in order to evade the objection, they asserted 
that he would compose an able Cabinet : — that he would select 
for the heads of the several departments, men in whom the na- 
tion might place confidence, and that these would do perfectly 
well the business which, it was admitted, the General could not 
do himself. This plan was quite an innovation, and certainly no 
improvement upon preceding modes of administering the Gov- 
ernment ; but when it was found that Jackson was actually elect- 
ed, the friends of the country thought there was some reason to 
hope and expect, that the promise thus held out of an able Cabi- 
net would he reaWsed. The ability of the Cabinet would have 



15 

furnished no adequate compensation for the incapacity of the 
Chief Magistrate, upon whom the responsibility for the Executive 
Department rests; but it was at least desirable that there should 
be capacity somewhere, and if it were wanting in the head, it was 
imperiously necessary that it should be found in the members. 

Never were hopes and expectations more completely disap- 
pointed. It seemed as if the new President, in constituting his 
Cabinet, and in making all his other appointments, had adopted 
the principle which the People had acted on in electing him ; 
that of taking the least competent man whom they could find. 
The individuals among his own friends, in whose character and 
talents the people felt any confidence, were studiously passed 
over, and the offices were given, either to persons who were too 
insignificant to have attracted any attention, or who were known 
merely as violent political partisans. Such was the case at 
Washington — in this city — and, as far as we are informed, 
throughout the country. 

The Jackson party consisted at that time of three principal 
sections or elements : — the General's personal adherents, the 
political friends of Mr. Calhoun, and those of Mr. Van Buren. 
Each of these sections comprehended gentlemen of merited dis- 
tinction, who had been drawn, by some strange fatality, into the 
support of Jackson, but whose names would have given respec- 
tability to the new Cabinet, and commanded, to a certain extent, 
the public confidence. Such were among the General's personal 
adherents, Messrs. Livingston, White and Grundy : among the 
friends of Mr. Calhoun, Messrs. Hayne, McDuffie, and Hamil- 
ton : among those of Mr. Van Euren, Mr. Tazewell, Gov. Dick- 
inson, Mr. McLane, and Mr. Forsyth. All these were men of 
known ability, and enjoyed, though in very different degrees, a 
certain share of the public esteem. The Calhoun men were the 
most eminent of the whole, and until they had destroyed their 
reputation for judgment and patriotism by the miserable farce of 
nullification, composed as brilliant a cluster of statesmen as 
could be found in any one of the states. It was understood, that 
Mr. Van Buren was to be Secretary of State. The purists, who 
had felt so much horror at the corrupt bargain between Messrs. 
Adams and Clay, hardly denied that such was the previous ar- 
rangement. But it was confidently expected that the friends of 
Mr. Calhoun and of the General himself would be represented in 
the Cabinet by some of the distinguished gentlemen enumerated 
above. What was the astonishment and dismay of all good men, 
when it was announced before the inauguration, that the Cabinet 
was to consist, beside Mr. Van Buren, of Messrs. Ingham, Branch, 
and Eaton, and that Postmaster-General McLean, a Jackson 



16 

man, was to give way to Mr. Barry ! The only drop of comfort 
in the new arrangement was the appointment of Mr. Berrien, 
who, though infected with all sorts of political heresies, is an 
able, and personally, respectable man. — But Mr. Berrien was 
only Attorney General, and was not a member of the Cabinet ; 
which was composed of Messrs. Van Buren, Ingham, Branch, 
Eaton, and Barry. Such was the construction of the able Cabinet, 
which was to make up, by its acknowledged capacity, for the ac- 
knowledged want of capacity in the head of the government, and 
which the Richmond Enquirer, who is fond of a joke, does not 
hesitate to describe as the ablest that had existed in the country 
since the first of General Washington. 

In representing Messrs. Ingham and Branch as not at that 
time possessing the public confidence, we mean no particular 
disparagement to their characters. They were almost wholly 
unknown to the people. They afterwards exhibited — especially 
Mr. Ingham — more ability than the public had expected from 
them, and their conduct on the change of administration, some- 
what raised them in the general estimation. Major Eaton is, we 
believe, personally not an obnoxious man. He is represented as 
essentially a weak, simple-hearted, good-humored creature, not 
without some notions of honor and courtesy, and, like Mr. Van 
Buren, ambitious of no other glory than that of having merited 
the esteem and confidence of Gen. Jackson. But that any one 
should have dreamed of him as a constituent member of an able 
Cabinet ; — a Cabinet which was to make good the deficiencies of 
the chief, and equal or surpass the fame of the first Washington 
administration, — this is indeed rather singular. Thomas Jeffer- 
son and Alexander Hamilton — whatever the Richmond Enquirer 
may think of it — knew how to write and spell, and had a very 
good notion of English grammar. 

When it was first announced at Washington that the Cabinet 
would be constituted in this manner, a friend of Mr. Adams, 
meeting by accident a prominent Calhoun man, expressed his 
wonder that the party should have acquiesced in such an arrange- 
ment. Sir, replied the other, I wish to inform you thai we hnoic 
as little of what is doing at the Wigwayn as you do. Gen. Jack- 
son was then lodged at the Indian dueen tavern. The public 
have since been informed by Gov. Hamilton, that the General 
about this time told him, that he should have given him the place 
of Secretary of War, had not his course in regard to the Tariff" 
and Nullification rendered him unpopular throughout the country. 
A superficial glance at the state of parties as they then existed is 
sufficient, with the aid of the developments that have since taken 
place, to make it apparent under what influence the able Cabinet 



17 

was organised : why, and on what pretences, the prominent Cal- 
houn men were studiously excluded from it ; and why it was 
composed of Martin Van Buren and four other gentlemen, who, 
if they knew little of reading, writing and English grammar, 
were supposed to be accomplished in the urtof cyphe ring ; a sup- 
position which experience has not so fully confirmed, as the 
leading unit probably expected. 

The only object of the arrangement, in all its parts, was to 
promote the selfish views of Martin Van Buren : — whose mean 
soul could see nothing in the election of General Jackson but 
the victory of one party over another — nothing in the great af- 
fairs of the Government but the SPOILS to be distributed 
among the conquerors ; and whose first exploit was to jockey 
his confederates out of their share of these same spoils, and ap- 
propriate it to himself. Mr. Van Buren is, more than any other 
individual, responsible to the world and to posterity for the deep 
disgrace that has been attached to the national character by the 
elevation of General Jackson to the office of President; and is 
almost exclusively responsible for tiie, if possible, still deeper de- 
gradation that has resulted from the acts of his administration. It 
is a fine example of what is sometimes called poetical justice, 
that is, the early occurrence of the disastrous consequences, 
which, sooner or later, generally attend on tortuous conduct, 
that this individual, after apparently realising all the objects he 
was aiming at, should have found them perishing, is it were, in 
his grasp : — have been compelled, bitterly against his will, though 
ostensibly by his own voluntary act, to quit the head of the de- 
partment of State ; have been rejected by the Senate as a for- 
eign Minister — under the circumstances, the strongest politi- 
cal censure that has ever been inflicted upon any citizen in this 
country : — and finally, have been held up, as if in mockery, for 
the Vice Presidency, only to be spurned at with one accord by 
the People. We said, in a former chapter, that we should speak 
particularly of this person, his character and his prospects. The 
present seems to be the proper opportunity. 

Possessed of considerable talents, but without the advantage 
of education, Mr. Van Buren rose from the lowest walks of life 
to a place in the Senate of the United States. Had he shewn 
in this dignified station something of the generosity of feeling 
that so naturally belongs to it, the public would have given him 
credit for his success, v/ithout looking too narrowly into the 
means by which he had obtained it. But no sooner had he 
reached the Senate than we found him endeavoring to carry 
into the general politics of the country the disingenuous arts 
V. hich he had practised so long on the smaller theatre of New 
3 



18 

York. The election of 1824 was approaching. The Federal 
party had disappeared, and several candidates were presented 
to the people, all belonging to the Republican party, recom- 
mended respectively by different sections of the country and by 
various descriptions of public service. Unwilling to permit the 
public voice to declare itself freely for the most worthy, Mr. Van 
Buren attempted to revive the old party machinery in favor of 
the one whom he thought proper to support, and having pro- 
cured his nomination by fifty or sixty members of Congress, 
declared, through the papers under his influence, that the per- 
sons who nominated him were THE democratic members of Con- 
gress! — Mr. Crawford, THE democratic candidate, and his 
friends THE democratic party. Why Mr. Crawford — an 
original Federalist, and of all the candidates the one who had the 
least personal pretensions, was fixed upon as THE Rqmhlican 
candidate — is not apparent. Probably he was the only one 
whom Mr. Van Buren could at that time approach for the pur- 
pose of personal arrangement. 

In this way, and for this purpose, commenced the system of 
False Pretences, which, as we have mentioned in a preceding 
chapter, has since been employed in favor of Jackson. What a 
miserable spirit a man must have, to denounce falsely as enemies 
his own political friends — men with whom he had been acting 
for years, and from whom he had received the most important 
services — merely to promote his own selfish views ! Such was the 
conduct of Martin Van Buren in regard to Mr. Adan^s, and even 
Gen. Jackson, who though since and now declared by him to be 
the democratic candidate, was at that time falsely denounced as a 
Federalist. 

This attempt to play off the New York machinery upon the 
great Theatre of the Union, did not succeed. Mr. Van Buren 
will ultimately find to his cost, that the people of the United 
States are not to be moved like puppets, by the mere drawing of 
a set of party wires. Even when they go wrong, it will gene- 
rally be found that they act under some strong and generous im- 
pulse, like that, for example, wliich was made upon their minds 
by the military services of General Jackson. Defeated in the 
effort to elevate Mr. Crawford, and incapable of pursuing the 
manly and straight-forward course of supporting the administra- 
tion of Mr. Adams until he should have done something to do- 
serve opposition, Mr. Van Buren began to calculate in what way 
he could best promote his own projects of further advancement; 
and conceiving that it would be his safest course to connect 
himself with the supposed popularity of Jackson, joined in the 
comhinaiion we have already described. 



19 

Does any one suppose that Mr. Van Buren really believed 
the claims of Gen. Jackson superior to those of Mr. Adams.? 
To bring the two men for a moment into comparison would be 
worse than mockery. On this head there was no mistake. Mr. 
Van Buren perfectly well knew that Gen. Jackson was not only 
utterly incompetent to the place, but that his elevation would be 
in a high degree dangerous — that it would certainly disgrace and 
might very possibly ruin the country. But of what consequence 
was it that the country was certainly disgraced and possibly ruined, 
provided that Martin Van Buren could take a step forward in 
political life 1 New York — the Empire State — which had just 
elected him to the highest office in her gift, and was unhappily at 
that time much under his influence, was thrown into the scale 
of Jackson. This time the plot succeeded, and Van Buren, to 
reward him for the share which he had in it, was placed in the 
Department of State. 

Throughout these proceedings we see distinctly the character 
of the man : — a narrow, sordid, selfish spirit, pursuing little ends 
by little means : no loftiness of purpose : no power, depth or 
reach of mind: no generosity of feeling: no principle: of course, 
no faith in the existence of any such qualities in others. He 
enterson the high and sacred concerns of Government in the same 
temper, in which as a village lawyer he sat down to play All 
Fours at the ale-house, and is just as ready to employ any trick 
that will increase his share of the SPOILS OF VICTORY. 
This celebrated phrase — the most unblushing avowal of infamy 
that was ever made by a public man — characterizes completely 
Mr. Van Buren and his party. Such a man can never be popu- 
lar in this or any other country. The people may at times be 
deceived by false representations of facts and superficial traits 
of character; but they detest meanness, and will never perma- 
nently attach their confidence to any man, who has not about 
him some great and generous qualities. 

So much for Mr. Van Buren. Mr, Calhoun is a person of 
another stamp. Much as we regret the aberration of judgment 
and feeling, (to himself a fatal one,) which led him to support 
Gen. Jackson ; — much as we deplore his connexion with the 
mad project of nullification, — we are yet bound to acknowledge 
— and we do it with pleasure — his vast superiority, intellectual, 
moral and political, over his Kinderhook competitor. Mr. Cal- 
houn is a man of commanding talents, upright purpose, and a 
generous disposition. Few gentlemen have ever made a more 
brilliant debut in the House of Representatives, or displayed 
more efficiency and dignity in an executive department. His 
fault is excessive ambition, or rather a feverish impatience to 



20 

grasp the fruit whicli at tiie proper season would naturally drop 
into his hands. This has led him into great errors, but it is the 
defect of a noble and manly character. At the time when Gen. 
Jackson came into office, Mr. Calhoun enjoyed a very general 
popularity, excepting perhaps in New England, where he was 
once much respected, but where his treatment of Mr. Adams had 
given offence. Had Jackson administered the Government 
with moderate discretion, he would probably have been re-elected, 
and in that case Mr. Calhoun would have followed in the Presi- 
dency. 

Van Buren of course could not venture to encounter such a 
man on the broad and open theatre of public favor. In order to 
supplant him, he resorted to his usual system of intrigue. In 
composing the Administration, he took care to exclude the great 
Calhoun leaders, under the pretence that their opinions on 
Nullification had rendered them unpopular. With the same 
general purpose and that he might keep the game entirely in his 
own hands, he excluded the prominent men among the Presi- 
dent's personal friends, and gave them, as a representative in 
the Cabinet, jyjajor Eaton ! ! ! 

Such is the history of the constitution of the ahle Cabinet. 
The blow which was thus aimed at the influence of Mr. Cal- 
houn, was followed up by others which have since most signally 
recoiled upon their author, and to which we shall advert here- 
after. — We shall proceed, in our next chapter^ to examine the 
course of the Administration, beginning with the 'policy of Pro- 
scription. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PROSCR[PTION. 



The election of General Jackson was a most perilous experi- 
ment, which the people, in a moment of wantonness, had tried 
upon the strength of their political constitution. There was 
however, a bare chance that the crisis might turn out somewhat 
less serious than the friends of the country generally feared. A 
considerable portion of the public, including Mr. Adams and his 
immediate personal friends, had considered Gen. Jackson as a 
rude, unlettered, and violent, but, on the whole, well-meaning 
man. In a letter addressed several years before to President 
Monroe, he had exhibited a very correct notion of the general 



21 

principles upon which the Government ought to be administered; 
and, in particular, had deprecated the indulgence of partisan 
preferences in appointments. If, conscious of his own incapaci- 
ty to carry on the Government, and aware, as he had shown 
himself to be, of the true principles to be observed in the selec- 
tion of public agents, he had acted on these with but a moderate 
degree of consistency and good faith, his election would have 
been attended with little or no public inconvenience. This was 
hoped by good men, and it did not appear entirely Utopian to 
suppose, that a President would show some little regard to rules 
of conduct, publicly laid down by himself, in the most emphatic 
and unequivocal terms. 

The greater probability undoubtedly was, that his complete 
and avowed incapacity for civil affairs would throw him under 
the influence of the political intriguers who were employing his 
name and popularity to advance their own projects; and that 
these, with the aid of the President's official responsibility be- 
tween them and the public, might be even less scrupulous in 
their proceedings than they would have been had they been acting 
in their own name. 

Such has, in fact, been the case. We have seen, in the pre- 
ceding chapter, that the Cabinet w-as constituted in such a man- 
ner, as to place the entire direction of the public affairs in the 
hands of Mr. Van Buren. The new Grand Vizier signalized 
the opening of his administration by introducing — for the first 
time, we believe, in the history of civilized nations — the princi- 
ple of the Universal Proscription of the public agents, high 
and low, who were not attached to the party which had obtained 
the majority. Had Jackson himself exercised any influence in the 
Government, we incline to think that he w'ould have shrunk 
from so barefaced an abandonment of his own avowed princi- 
ples. Had Van Buren been acting in his own name, we doubt 
whether he would have ventured upon the responsibility of a mea- 
sure so desperate. But conceiving, probably, that by acting under 
the General's mask, he should escape in part from this respon- 
sibility, and enjoy the advantage of a distribution of the SPOILS 
among his followers with less risk, he took the plunge — which 
is likely, in its consequences, to occasion the political ruin of him- 
self and his master. The lists were made up, and the victims 
brought to the sacrifice, with an indiscriminate ferocity that 
made no inquiries respecting age, character, connexions, or 
condition, and would have done honor to the satellites of Domi- 
tian or Nero. 

The extent to which this system of cold-blooded massacre — 
for it deserves no other name — was carried, has been often 



22 

stated, but cannot be made too familiar, and should be 
constantly held up to the public view and the public de- 
testation, until the ingredients of the poisoned chalice have 
been returned — as they will be within a few months — to 
the lips of those who administered them. The number of 
the victims is distinctly indicated by the appalling fact, that 
within one month after the inauguration of Jackson there were 
more removals from office than had taken place since the organi- 
zation of the Government. No superiority of qualifications — no 
length of service — no excellence of character or interest of per- 
sonal position constituted a ground for exception. A^t the mo- 
ment when the gratitude of the Nation for the services of the 
Army of the Revolution had led Congress to the adoption of 
the extraordinary measure of a pension law, several of the vete- 
ran survivors of the struggle were rudely thrust by the Execu- 
tive out of the offices in which the justice of his predecessors 
had placed them, and left on the confines of the grave, to strug- 
gle with actual poverty. Posterity, when they read the account 
of the passage of the Pension Law, and the encomiums upon the 
characters and services of the Revolutionary Patriots that fill 
the columns of our pamphlets and newspapers, will hardly be- 
lieve that at the same period the President denounced as a pub- 
lic enemy the venerable survivor of the Tea Party, and distribu- 
ted his SPOILS among his own retainers. 

Nothing could arrest the progress of this mischief Mr. Mc- 
Lean, then Postmaster-General, attempted to make a stand for 
his department ;■ but was compelled, though a Jackson-man, to 
quit it himself : hundreds of Postmasters were sacrificed at a 
blow,- and this vast system which was constructed for the dif- 
fusion of knowledge and just principles among the People, be- 
came at once, as it has been ever since, and is now, an engine 
of corruption. The manner in which the operation was conduct- 
ed was, if possible, still more offensive than the thing itself 
The seat of Government became the scene of a disgusting per- 
sonal scramble among thousands and tens of thousands of appli 
cants, who had come up from all quarters of the Union to get 
their share of the SPOILS, as the carrion crows assemble round 
a carcass. The President himself forgot all regard for his own 
dignity and the ordinary rules of civility in his intercourse with 
the public servants, who had committed the heinous crime of 
receiving an appo ntment from one of his predecessors. In 
some cases, he treated them with the grossest rudeness in his 
own house, and in others violated, without scruple, his own posi- 
tive engagements that they should not be removed. 

All this was bad enough. It even constituted, as Mr. Madi- 
son has correctly stated in the Federalist — a good ground for 



23 

impeachment. The President has the constitutional right ta 
remove the persons who hold their offices at his pleasure, but in 
this, as in every other case, he is bound to exercise his consti- 
tutional power in such a manner as, to the best of his know- 
ledge and belief, will be most conducive to the public good. If 
he act from corrupt motives, though within the pale of the Con- 
stitution, he is impeachable, and to remove or appoint a public 
agent merely on party grounds is just as criminal as to remove 
or appoint him for a consideration in money. 

But even this, bad as it was, was not the worst. The party 
felt that it was necessary to put some color upon this hitherto 
unprecedented proceeding, and in order to justify themselves to the 
People, they resorted to the infamous expedient of SLANDER. 
Not content with depriving hundreds of the ablest and most merito- 
rious public agents of their means of subsistence, the President 
attempted to blast their characters by throwing out against them, 
in his Inaugural Address, the vague and sweeping charge of 
corruption. What would have been thought, if the President 
had publicly declared that commissions in the Army and Navy 
had fallen into corrupt hands, and had followed up this declara- 
tion by the removal of two or three hundred of our ablest and 
most distinguished military and naval officers, without giving 
them the opportunity of a hearing, or even knowing the offences 
that were imputed to them ? Is the reputation of those who 
serve the public in a civil capacity, less dear to them, less sacred 
in itself, than that of the officers of the Army and Navy ? Are 
they to be publicly denounced by the President as corrupt, and 
punished accordingly, without a hearing, or even a specification 
of the charge? If such proceedings are to be ultimately sanc- 
tioned by the public approbation, it is plain that tlie public ser- 
vice must be abandoned by every citizen who values or re- 
spects his own character, and become what the party avowedly 
wish to make it — a prize for which the reckless and the profli- 
gate are to gamble, fight and bully. 

Attempts were even made in some instances to fasten this 
vague charge of corruption upon individuals. 3Ir. Nouvse, a 
clerk in one of the departments at Washington, was not only 
rudely thrust out of his place at the age of more than eighty, and 
offer a long life devoted to the public service, but actually had 
his furniture seized under a Treasury loarrant of distress upon 
a false charge of })eculation, at a time when, as appears by a sub- 
sequent decisio7i of the competent tribimal, the United States owed 
him more than twelve thousand dollars! This single act, could 
it be fairly made known to the mass of the people, ought to and 
would raise such a general burst of indignation as would at once 



24 

send back the unfeeling tyrant who dared to commit it to his 
Hermitage. The case of Fillebrown was exactly similar. In 
that of Bradley, the public accounts were altered in the Post 
Office, for the sake of fastening upon a removed officer the re- 
sponsibility for acts done by his successor. 

The ordinary forms of decorous language contain no epithets 
appropriate to such proceedings. To say that they were vio- 
lent, unjust and cruel, and at the same time revoltingly mean 
and base, conveys but a very inadequate impression of the unut- 
terable disgust with which they must be contemplated by every 
manly, patriotic and honorable mind. The party themselves 
became, after a while, ashamed of the charge of corruption; and 
in the manifesto which followed the Inaugural Address, under 
the title of the President's First Message to Congress, they 
quitted this ground and resorted to the stale sophistry of Rota- 
tion in Office. It was now intimated that the possession of of- 
fice had a bad effect upon the character of the possessor ; that 
the public lost more by this result than they gained by his ex- 
perience ; that it was therefore expedient that all the public 
functionaries should be changed as often as once in three or 
four years ; and especially and above all, that the President 
should never hold his office more than one term. As to the 
functionary himself, it was said that he had no claim to employ- 
ment, or right to complain if he were removed. He sought the 
public service with a view to his own interest only, and when 
the public had received all the benefit which he was able to 
bestow upon them, they had a perfect right to set him adrift — 
when they had squeezed the orange, they were quite at liberty to 
throw away the peel. 

Such was the manner in which the President in his first mes- 
sage to Congress, justified the system of proscription. What a 
noble and generous creed to be openly promulgated, and made 
the basis of public action, by the Chief Magistrate of the great 
Republic of the Western world ! On this system, Washington 
had no other motive for taking the command of the army of the 
revolution, but to cover his personal expenses ; for, as is well 
known, he refused all pay. Adams, Jay, and Franklin, were 
amply remunerated by their country for the gift of freedom, in- 
dependence, and national being, when they had drawn for their 
salaries as Ministers Plenipotentiary. Such was not the feel- 
ing of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, when he put at risk half 
a million of dollars with a dash of his pen ; and if such is in future 
to be the standard of political morality among us, it is to be fear- 
ed that the last of the signers, old as he is, may yet live to see 
the sacred instrument which received that signature, torn up and 



25 

trampled under foot like a worthless piece of waste paper. 
We will not, however, so far insult the good sense and patriotic 
feelings of our countrymen, as to attempt to refute this shallow 
and odious sophistry. It carries distinctly on its face the cer- 
tificate of its origin, and however false in a general application 
to the honorable and high spirited people of the United States, 
is probably a very true description of the case of Mr. Van Bu- 
ren. It is well observed by Dr. Johnson, that a person who ac- 
cuses all men of acting from corrupt motives, convicts at least 
one. As Mr. Van Buren tells us that the citizens regularly seek 
the public service with sordid and selfish views, he will not 
be surprised if we venture to conclude that his own are of that 
character ; and as he had previously informed us that the proper 
method of rewarding such services, was by an unceremonious 
dismissal, whenever it suited our convenience, we rather wonder 
that he should have been so deeply wounded by his own re- 
jection as Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. Let us 
hope that he will have made up his mind to endure the negative 
of the people upon his pretensions to the Vice Presidency with 
more composure 

The degree of sincerity with which the President expressed 
these opinions, were pretty distinctly shown soon after, when a 
missive was despatched from his own cabinet under his own 
frank, soliciting a renomination from the Legislature of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

There is the less reason to refute this poor pretence of 
argument, inasmuch as even this has since been dropped. After 
first justifying the proscriptive system on the ground that the 
public offices had fallen into corrupt or incompetent hands, and 
then pretending that a perpetual rotation in office was in theory, 
the true method of transacting the public business to the best 
advantage, the party finally threw off the mask, and openly 
avowed, in the person of Mr. Senator Marcy, that the real 
object of the removals was to distribute among their followers the 
SPOILS OF VICTORY. In making this precious confession, 
Mr. Marcy very properly spoke for the New York school. 
Such is the principle upon which we act in Neio York. The 
public were pretty well aware of this before, but it is not amiss 
to have it certified under the hand and seal of the Regency. It 
only remains for them to be as explicit in regard to the means . 
they employ as they have been in regard to the ends they aim 
at, and to emblazon upon their flaa that other favorite New York 
maxim,— ALL'S FAIR IN POLITICS. We shall then know 
what to depend upon, and if we are taken in by them, it will at 
least be with our eyes open. 

4 



26 

The unblushing and brazen faced assurance with which these 
political gamblers glory in their shame is almost comic. But it 
is time to quit this odious subject. The appointments that were 
made to fill the vacancies created by the proscriptive policy, 
furnish another chapter still more humiliating, if possible, to 
the friends of the country, than that of the removals. It really 
seemed at one time as if the State Prison was to become one of 
the steps in the career of official promotion. When before, 
was it ever known in this or any other civilized country, that a 
Diplomatic Agent had occasion, before he proceeded on his 
mission, to explain the circumstances under which he was 
indicted for forgery r — Even this — we say it with horror — was 
not the worst case. For the honor of the country and of 
humanity, we gladly draw a veil over the details of this 
scene. 

Happily, the excess of the evil wrought immediately its own 
cure, and compelled the Senate to adopt an entire independence 
in regard to approvals, which they might not otherwise have so 
readily come into, and which, to a considerable extent at least, 
stayed the plague. To this distinguished body, not inferior in 
the eloquence, elevated standing, and manly patriotism of its 
members, to the Roman Senate in its brightest days, the people 
of this country are under great obligations. They stood forth 
boldly, at one of the darkest periods we have yet known, to 
redeem the national honor, and to arrest the base spirit of ser- 
vility to Executive dictation that appeared to be curdling the 
very heart's blood of the Republic. If the national flag has not 
been trampled under foot by the British ministry — if the terri- 
tory of Maine is yet entire — if we are not represented in several 
foreign courts by men who have been or should be the tenants 
of our penitentiaries — we owe it to the noble resistance of the 
Senate. Much no doubt of evil they could not prevent : wounds 
have been inflicted upon the Constitution which it will require 
the efforts of them and their successors for many years to come 
to heal ; but they did great good by their immediate action, and 
their high example has done still more. Their manly indepen- 
dence has awakened a corresponding spirit throughout the 
country. The wretched delusion under which the people were 
at one time laboring, seems to be rapidly passing off', and there 
is reason to hope that all will yet be well. 

In the next chapter, we shall proceed in the examination of 
the policy of Gen. Jackson, and inquire briefly into the man- 
ner in which he has managed our Foreign Relations. 



27 

CHAPTER V. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS. 

The leading characteristics of the conduct of the present Ad- 
ministration have been violence and meanness : — a combination 
of qualities as unattractive as any that can perhaps well be im- 
agined. Wherever the direct infld^nce of Gen. Jackson is ap- 
parent, their proceedings have been rude, arbitrary, and often 
absolutely unconstitutional : where Mr. Van Buren may be 
supposed to give the direction, the policy pursued is usually 
cunning, trickish and mean. This is more particularly the case 
with the Foreign Relations, which form so important a part of the 
attributions of the Federal Government, and in which the opera- 
tion of low and narrow motives, especially those of a party 
character, is in every way so ungraceful. This department of 
the administration of Gen. Jackson has been marked by two 
principal features : first, a mean assumption of the credit of 
negotiations undertaken, matured, and in several instances con- 
cluded by his predecessor; and secondly, a mean prostration of 
the honor of the country at the feet of the British Ministry, for 
the purpose of obtaining, at all sacrifices, the appearance of a 
successful arrangement of the question of the Colonial trade. 

It was said of the celebrated Carnot, that he organized vic- 
tory in the French armies. It may be said with equal truth of 
Mr. Adams, that he organized success in the diplomacy of the 
United States. As Chairman of the Commissioner.*; at Ghent he 
was called on, of course, to take the lead in the negotiations for 
peace; and the ability with which he conducted them, not only 
contributed as much as any other cause to procure us an advan- 
tageous peace, but called forth from British statesmen of various 
parties, including such men as the Marquis Wellesley and Sir 
James Mackintosh, the confession in open Parliament of the 
' astonishing superiority ' of the argument on our side. Even 
Mr. Pickering, then a representative in Congress, forgot on this 
occasion his hereditary antipathy to Mr. Adams's father's son, 
and cheerfully joined in the general expression of approbation 
and gratitude. 

The conclusion of this treaty formed an era in our history. 
The close of the long wars of the French Revolution with which 
it coincided in point oftime, left the political world in a wholly un- 
settled condition. The United States for the first time felt their 
importance, and were called upon to stand forth as a really in- 



28 

dependent power in the brotherhood of nations. The relations 
belonging to this new position were to be created. The task 
wasoneof the highest delicacy, and the honor of taking the princi- 
pal direction in the execution of it devolved upon Mr. Adams. 
Upon assuming the duties of Secretary of State under President 
Monroe, he commenced negotiations with all the principal 
powers of the old and new world. The immediate management 
of them was committed in general to citizens of distinguished 
talents and learning, and they were continued with unremitted 
assiduity and diligence duri^ig the whole period of the admin- 
istration of Messrs. Monroe and Adams. It would of course 
carry us beyond the limits of the present essay to give even a 
concise sketch of the plans of foreign policy embraced in these 
negotiations. Suffice it to say that they will hereafter furnish a 
subject for one of the most interesting and honorable chapters 
in our national history. Our present object is rather to consid- 
er the degree of success which attended these operations. 

It is well known that no results can be obtained in the way 
of diplomatic neg-otiation excepting by much perseverance and 
long delay. But such was the correctness of the principles upon 
which Mr. Adams had predicated his foreign policy, and such 
the ability with which they had been enforced, that the negotia- 
tions had taken, in almost all quarters, a satisfactory direction. 
Our relations with the new South American States had been 
established : — our claims on many of the European powers, for 
spoliations committed during the war, had been urged by unan- 
swerable arguments, the force of which these powers were begin- 
ing to feel: — our true position in regard to Russia, — the cardin- 
nal point in our foreign relations as a political power, was for 
the first time perceived and acted on : — new commercial arrange- 
ments were matured or concluded with more than one State of 
the first order, particularly Austria and Turkey. With Great 
Britain our negotiations had been brought to a crisis, which, 
though it wore for the moment an unfavorable aspect, must have 
terminated — had not the progress of the affair been interrupted 
by the blundering interference of Mr. Van Buren — in a mutu- 
ally beneficial convention. In short, our negotiations abroad 
were in a good train in all quarters, and this without the use of 
corrupt means, or any compromise of the national dignity. The 
reputation and influence of the country in foreign courts were 
constantly increasing, and our representatives were every where 
the objects of particular esteem and favor. 

Such was the state of things when Gen. Jackson came into 
power- What was to be done ? A President who had had the 
least pretensions to discretion and patriotism, would have consid- 



29 

ered himself too happy to be able to proceed in the same course, 
upon the same principles, and as far as possible with the same 
agents : — would have shrunk instinctively from any movement 
that should disturb in the slightest degree the existing harmony. 
With the degraded beings who had now usurped the seats once oc- 
cupied by Washingtons, Adamses, Hamiltons and Jeffersons, 
the first thought was to appropriate the poor pittance with 
which the country rewards or rather ruins its diplomatic agents, 
as a part of the SPOILS OF VICTORY. For the first time 
in the history of this or any other civilized country, a change 
of Administration was made the signal for a general recall of the 
foreign ministers. Our whole policy was put at risk : — our ne- 
gotiations thrown into a state of suspense : — a great positive 
outlay incurred : — public agents of acknowledged ability and expe- 
rience rudely thrust out of place: — and all for the honorable pur- 
pose of providing a few additional morsels for the ravenous maw of 
the " Monster Party.'' Such was the blundering impatience with 
which Mr. Van Buren conducted this operation, that he did 
not even stop to ask the chief clerk in the Department of State 
what was the regular form of recalling a foreign minister. This 
at least is the most charitable construction which can be put upon 
the fact, that in the mode of doing it he violated all the ordinary 
rules of international courtesy. As to the persons recalled, 
they — to reward them for years of expatriation, labor and [)ecu- 
niary sacrifice — were publicly insulted as corrupt and incapable. 
After extending this manly and decorous treatment to we know 
not how many honorable citizens, Mr. Van Buren, when nega- 
tived himself by the Senate, very coolly represents his case as 
one oi peculiar hardship! This modest little gentleman proba- 
bly supposes that he has a patent right to outrage the most 
eminent citizens in the country with impunity, and that they, 
instead of resenting or taking it amiss, ought to think themselves 
too happy to be trampled upon by so great a man. 

Such was the dehut of Gen. Jackson in the management of 
our foreign relations : a violent and sudden interruption of all 
the most important negotiations for the purpose of placing a 
troop of his favorites. — And such favorites ! — But we will not 
touch again upon this odious topic. The beginning, it must be 
owned, was not auspicious. Still, however, the negotiations had 
been so judiciously planned and were in so good a train when 
Jackson took them in hand, that with all his blunders, and all 
his ignorance, he could not prevent them from coming to a suc- 
cessful issue. — Treaties were sent home soon after the opening 
of his term from Brazil, Austria, Turkey and Denmark, and 
more recently from France, and Mexico, providing in a satisfac- 



30 

tory manner for the settlement of various questions of long stand- 
ing and great interest, or opening new commercial relations. 
Of these arrangements the whole credit is obviously due to the 
preceding Administration. They had been negotiated on the 
principles laid down by Mr. Adams, and under his instructions. 
If the abrupt change in the persons of the ministers did not 
injure their progress, it will at least not be pretended that it 
could promote it ; nor will it be i)retended, even by the partisans 
of Jackson, that the change was in any instance, so far as person- 
al qualifications were concerned, for the better. The credit of 
these treaties, belonged, therefore, we repeat, entirely to the 
preceding Administration. A President of high and honorable 
sentiments in announcing their conclusion, would have taken 
great care to make this fact distinctly known. A man of real 
merit scorns to deck himself out with borrowed plumes. The 
circumstance that his predecessor was a political opponent, 
would have been an additional motive for doing him the fullest 
justice — especially if that political opponent had proved himself 
individually, and on the most important occasions, a friend in 
need. What was Gen. Jackson's conduct ? From first to last, 
he has carefully omitted even to mention the name of his prede- 
cessor in connection with any of these arrangements. His par- 
tisans, improving upon his example, regularly make the conclu- 
sion of a treaty negotiated entirely under the instructions of Mr. 
Adams and Mr. Clay, the occasion for pouring out upon these 
illustrious statesmen a new volley of slander and ribaldry. Thus, 
when the documents relating to the negotiation with Turkey 
were published during the late session of Congress, a scurrilous 
newspaper printed in this city employed them as the text for a 
eulogy on Mr. Van Buren, and an attack on Mr. Clay. Every 
one who has given the subject the slightest attention, is aware 
that the only change made in the arrangements of the preceding 
Administration in regard to Turkey by the agents of the present 
one, was the introduction by the latter into the treaty, of a 
foolish and imprudent article, which would have prejudiced our 
relations with Russia, and which was unanimously rejected by 
the Senate. 

It sickens the heart to see this utter want of all the manly 
and generous sentiments — this complete ascendency of the 
meanest and basest propensities of our nature in persons placed 
by their official rank at the very head of society: — to make the 
matter still worse, in a cabinet directed by a military President. 
Generosity, courtesy, dignity of manner, an excess of chivalrous 
feeling, constitute the peculiar graces of the military character, 
and in practice compensate in some degree for the absence of 



31 

many accomplishments that are not very compatible with that 
line of life. Without them the soldier degenerates into the 
ruffian and bully. We were in fact told beforehand, by the 
present partisans of Jackson, that in the event of his election the 
spirit belonging to these respectable professions would prevail 
at Washington. The disgraceful scenes of the last winter, to 
which we shall advert hereafter, have confirmed too fully the 
ominous prophecy. 

Such, however, is the first leading feature in this branch of the 
proceedings of the present Administration: — a mean assumption 
of the credit belonging to their predecessors for several treaties, 
negotiated and matured or concluded under their instructions. 
In one important particular, Gen. Jackson has, as we have 
already remarked, given in some degree a new direction to the 
foreign policy of the country. We allude, of course, to the late 
arrangement of the question of the trade with the British West 
Indian Colonies. 

It is not our purpose, nor would the limits of the present es- 
say allow us, to enter upon a detailed examination of the merits 
of this arrangement, considered in itself and independently of the 
circumstances under which it was concluded. It has been am- 
ply shown in the debates upon the floor of the Senate, and par- 
ticularly in the able and lucid speech of Mr. Sprague, that the 
country, instead of gaining any thing by this treaty, actually 
stands upon worse ground than before. — The effect of it, as far 
as it operates, which has been as yet to a very limited extent, 
will be to throw the carrying trade with the islands into British 
hands. But were the case in this respect otherwise, — had the 
treaty given us every thing that we had ever asked or wished, — 
had it conveyed to us in fee simple the whole soil and jurisdic- 
tion of the British West Indies, the advantage would have been 
too dearly purchased at the price which we gave for what we 
in fact got. A Secretary of State denouncing, in the name of 
the President, the government of his own country under a pre- 
ceding Administration as an opposite party: — inviting a foreign 
Sovereign to take cognizance of our domestic differences, to 
enter into them, to turn them to account for the benefit of the 
pitiful petitioner, and of course for his own! Never before was 
a spectacle so shameful as this exhibited on the theatre of Ameri- 
can diplomacy. Never, we trust, after the signal rebuke which 
the managers received in this instance, will it be repeated. The 
British Government called in to assist a recreant Administration 
in sustaining itself against the indignant outcry of the country ! 
Shades of Washington, Hancock and Adams — of Hamilton, 
Jefferson, Monroe and Pinckney ! Was this then to be the 



32 

Jinale of the long series of remonstrances, declarations, non-inter- 
courses, embargoes, and wars, that have made up our relations 
with England for the last sixty years, and given full employment 
to the heads, the hearts, the pens, the tongues, and the swords of 
our best and bravest? This the denoj/e?/icn^ of the supersensi- 
tive delicacy that shrunk from the slightest breath of British in- 
terference in our politics, foreign or domestic, as if it had been 
a blasting pestilence or a red-hot sirocco ? Where was the 
good genius of our country when a miserable Dutch pettifogser 
took the star-spangled banner, all radiant as it was, with fifty 
years of honor and victory, and spread it out as a carpet for the 
feet of Lord Aberdeen? No, never, never before was there 
such an example of national degradation. Thanks to Provi- 
dence, the public feeling of the country revolted against it by a 
sort of convulsive reaction, and instead of prostrating the Union 
at the feet of the British Minister, Mr. Van Buren has only suc- 
ceeded in prostrating himself at the feet of the Senate and Peo- 
ple of the United States. — This exploit finishes, we trust, his 
political career, and determines the character that he will leave 
behind him. Martin Van Buren, the Secretary of State 
WHO denounced his predecessor as a political opponent to 
THE British Ministry. 

How contemptible too was the apology made for this con- 
temptible proceeding by the partisans of the Administration in 
the Senate I Not a lisp in justification ; but it seems that this 
part of the instructions was dictated by the President himself, 
and Mr. Van Buren is of course not responsible for it. The 
Globe has in fact informed us in so many words that the gen- 
eral is BORN TO COMMAND, and Mr. Van Buren, we know, 
is ambitious of no higher distinction than the GLORY OF 
OBEDIENCE to such a commander. Poor creatures ! Are 
they really in earnest, or are they sporting with the supposed in- 
fatuation of the people ? Was Mr. Van Buren then a passive 
instrument in the hands of his master? Had he no mind, voice, 
will, heart, or hand of his own ? When before was there a Sec- 
retary of State in the United States, who shrunk from the respon- 
sibility of a letter that bore his own signature ? When before 
was there a Secretary of State in the United States, who would 
not have hurled his commission back in the face of a President 
who should have dared to ask him to sign the dishonor of his 
country ? But it is of little importance to the people how these 
worthies divide between them the responsibility of this business. 
There is infamy enough about it to bankrupt the whole firm. 

There are other points of a doubtful character in our recent 
negotiations with England. There is reason to suppose that 



33 

Mr. Van Buren undertook to tamper with the great and deli- 
cate questions of Impressment and Neutral Rights, and as it 
has never been said of him, as it was of Goldsmith, that he 
adorns whatever he touches, we may be sure that his interfer- 
ence with these matters bodes no good to the honor of the coun- 
try. It has been vaguely rumored that some apparent conces- 
sion on these points was to have been purchased by a base sur- 
render of the territorial and personal rights of the State of 
Maine. This work of iniquity, if it were in fact contemplated, 
has been nipped in the bud by the noble interference of the 
Senate, and we shall probably never know with certainty wheth- 
er it was or was not entered upon. The bare suspicion of 
having entertained the intention of making such a compromise, 
would be sufficient, if there were nothing else exceptiona- 
ble about him, to fix the measure of Mr. Van Buren's charac- 
ter. 

So much for our relations with Great Britain, the only part of 
our foreign policy of which the present Administration can prop- 
erly claim the credit. No patriotic and high-spirited American 
can read the account of them without the strongest feelings of 
contempt and indignation. They constitute the serious part of 
the business : but in all human affairs, we are continually pass- 
ing from grave to gay, and after going through with the Trag dy 
it was perhaps not unnatural that we should be entertained witu 
a Farce. — When Napoleon elevated the Grand Duke of Wir- 
temburg, a bloated, blundering butcher-like potentate of the old 
school, to the dignity of King, it was said that he had for ten or 
twelve years been doing all he could to keep the Germans in 
tears, and that he was resolved for once to make them laugh. 
This, or something like it was probably the intention of Jackson 
and Van Buren, when they appointed John Randolph our Min- 
ister to Russia. 

Our relations with this great power were previously in the 
most satisfactory state, thanks to the ability and discretion with 
which they had been managed by the preceding Administration. 
The Russian Cabinet, which has been for many years intellect- 
ually as well as physically the most powerful in Europe, has ex- 
hibited its usual sagacity in its whole deportment towards the 
United States. They have seen that the force of circumstances es- 
tablishes a relation of political alliance between the two countries, 
and have uniformly acted accordingly. In our negotiations for 
peace with Great Britain — in our subsequent negotiations under 
the treaty of Ghent — in those that have been carried on more 
recently with Turkey — in short, throughout the whole progress 
of our foreign afiairs for the last twenty years, we have enjoyed 

5 



34 

the benefit of the countenance and good offices of Russia. It 
has so happened, that we have hitherto had but Httle opportunity 
of making any substantial return for these demonstrations of 
national good will. The least that could be expected from us 
was that we should discharge with punctuality the ordinary 
duties of official respect and decorum. What then must have 
been the feelings of the Russian Government, when — after such 
a course of conduct on their part towards us, a minister known 
to be personally agreeable to the Emperor was abruptly recall- 
ed, as if for the purpose of repaying his friendship with studied 
insult? What, again, must have been the impression made up- 
on the Russian Court, accustomed as they had been to the dig- 
nity and propriety of Mr. Middleton's deportment — when they 
saw the new Plenipotentiary taking the field in a hunting dress 
— going down upon his knees before the Emperor, and — after 
playing a few more fantastic tricks of the same description — 
departing before he had fairly entered upon his duties, and fi.\- 
ing his residence — of all the places in the world — at London ? 
No construction could of course be put upon such conduct but 
the true one, viz. that the minister was half crazy. But must 
not the Russian Cabinet have thought the President entirely so, 
to recall such a man as Mr. Middleton for the purpose of com- 
mitting the aff'airs of the Legation to such a successor? 

Such has been the mode, in which our foreign relations have 
been managed by the present incumbents in the government. 
For his proceedings towards both England and Russia, we have 
no hesitation in saying, that the President richly deserves the 
honors of impeachment. In the next chapter we shall take up 
the subject of the Domestic Policy of the country, the history of 
which is about as creditable to the discretion and ability of our 
rulers, as that of the foreign. 



CHAPTER VL 

DOMESTIC POLICY. 



Violence and Meanness, — such, as we remarked in the last 
chapter, have been the leading characteristics of the conduct 
of the Administration. We have seen them exemplified in their 
mode of managing our foreign relations : we shall see them still 
more fully displayed in our home politics, which will form the 
subject of this and the two or three following chapters. 



35 

An Administration, like an individual, must be supposed to 
have, and in fact always has, certain objects to which its atten- 
tion is chiefly devoted. Thus the leading point of the policy 
of Rome for several centuries was the overthrow of the rival 
republic of Carthage. The great object of the British govern- 
ment while under the brilliant administration of the younger 
Pitt, was to check the progress of the spirit of political reform 
at home and abroad : — the present object of the same govern- 
ment is to aid and accelerate this progress. The object of 
Napoleon was to found a vast military despotism upon the ruins 
of all the free states of Europe : — that of the Russian govern- 
ment, from the time of Peter the Great to the present day, has 
been substantially the same. To come nearer home, the chief 
object of the government of the United States, from its organ- 
ization till the treaty of Ghent, was the security of our com- 
mercial and political rights as a. neutral poiver : that of all the 
following Administrations, until the present, was the develope- 
ment of our internal resources and the encouragement of do- 
mestic industry. Such are the great concerns that engage the 
attention of statesmen, and serve to show that, even in their 
errors and excesses, they have at least something of the eleva- 
tion of spirit that belongs to their position. 

The objects of the present Administration have been of a dif- 
ferent character. It is admitted by their partisans that, in seek- 
ing to obtain possession of the government, they had nothing 
in view but the SPOILS OF VICTORY. The distribution 
of these spoils has of course been the great affair, and the lead- 
ing principle of conduct has been to distribute them, as far as 
possible, in such a way as would best ensure their possession 
for another term, or, in other words, as would most effectually 
" bring the patronage of the government into conflict with the 
purity of elections." We have already adverted particularly 
to this feature in the proceedings of the Administration, in our 
chapter on the Policy of Proscription. — But even this object, base 
as it is, was too elevated to be steadily pursued. — Thrown up 
by accident, as they have been, out of the lowest circles of so- 
ciety — wholly destitute of the intellectual qualities and accom- 
plishments that are wanted in the vast sphere of action where 
they are placed, their policy is of course the narrowest self 
interest, and even this must constantly give way to the impulses 
of their personal propensities and habits. It is a literal fact 
that, in the midst of all the political agitations of the present 
critical period, the object which has engaged, more than any 
other, the attention of the government of the United States 
under the administration of General Jackson, has been that of 



36 

procuring a favorable reception for a female friend of the 
President in the fashionable circles of Washington. 

It is easy to see, upon the slightest survey of the proceed- 
ings of the Administration, in regard to the great and paramount 
concerns which really constitute the domestic policy of the coun- 
try, that the latter have been entirely sacrificed to these misera- 
ble party and personal interests. — The Tariff and Internal Im- 
provements: — The Indians and the Missionaries, and the Bank, 
are the most important subjects connected with the internal 
situation of the country, that have come under consideration 
during the last three years. We shall advert briefly, in suc- 
cession, to each, and shall be able to show without difficulty, 
that, in reference to all of them, the President has acted, from 
the blind and arbitrary impulse of his own will, or with a single 
view to secure and perpetuate the ascendancy of //is pai-ty. 

1. The Tariff: — Since the close of the war with Great Brit- 
ain, the developement of the internal resources of the country 
by the encouragement of domestic industry, and the opening 
of communications by land and water, between the different 
sections of the Union, have become, as we have already re- 
marked, the principal objects of interest with the people. The 
course of legislative measures intended to effect these objects, 
which was entered upon as early as the first formation of the 
government, has been pursued with increased vigor and spirit. 
A difference of opinion has no doubt existed in regard to the 
expediency, and even the constitutionality of these measures, 
but they have been steadily sustained by great and regularly 
increasing majorities of the citizens, and after the favorable 
results of the violent attack made upon them in Congress last 
winter, may be viewed as the settled policy of the nation. In 
the new impulse which was given to the progress of this system 
soon afler the close of the war, Mr. Calhoun and his immediate 
friends and political associates from Carolina took the lead: and 
it is a singular and signal example of political inconsistency, 
that these very statesmen should have become the leaders of a 
party which denounces the same system as not only inexpedient 
but unconstitutional, and a fit occasion for actual rebellion (such 
is the plain English of nidUfiration) against the General Gov- 
ernment. The Eastern States came rather slowly and reluc- 
tantly into the adoption of the system. They were apprehen- 
sive of its effect upon their navigation, and until recently op- 
posed it in every stage of its progress. Experience has at 
length satisfied them of its expediency: they have invested their 
capital on the faith of its continuance, and are now among its 
warmest supporters. The Great West has been from the be- 



37 

ginning, the ardent, consistent, and undeviating advocate of 
the same principles, which, important as they are every where 
else, constitute in that quarter of the Union, the siiie qua non of 
prosperity, and even political existence. 

As a Western politician, General Jackson was of course vir- 
tually pledged to the Tariff. He had given before his election, 
the most positive and satisfactory assurances of his devotion to 
the protecting policy, particularly in his letter to the Governor 
of Indiana. Pennsylvania, whose support first gave conse- 
quence to his nomination, was perhaps the one of all the states 
most deeply interested in, and most unequivocally pledged to 
the American System. There was, therefore, every reason to 
suppose that whatever other deficiencies there might be in the 
character of Jackson, the great interest of domestic industry 
would, — as long as he should be President, — be sure of a firm 
and steady support in the Executive department of the gov- 
ernment. 

What has been the fact.'' — No sooner had he effected his 
election, than his advisers began to calculate the value of the 
Tariff as a party measure. It was found that a considerable 
portion of the citizens who are opposed to the protecting policy, 
had favored his election, and would probably be disposed to 
continue him in office; and that on the other hand, a majority 
of the friends of the system were attached to his opponents, 
Messrs. Adams and Clay. 

What was to be done .'' A high-minded and patriotic Presi- 
dent would have pursued a straight forward course, — main- 
tained his principles, — redeemed his pledges, and left his popu- 
larity and his re-election to take care of themselves. Gen, 
Jackson and Mr. Van Buren looked at the matter under a dif- 
ferent point of view. It would not answer to alienate the South, 
where their strength lay, by a manly and consistent support of 
the protecting policy: it would not answer on the other hand, 
to alienate the portion of the friends of that system, including 
Pennsylvania and the West, which were friends to them, by 
openly attacking it. The only thing they could do was to at- 
tempt to steer a middle course which should, if possible, please 
both parties, or at least not decidedly offend either. The lan- 
guage of the messages on this subject has been uniformly vague 
and vacillating. When the battle came on last winter before 
Congress, and the Secretary of the Treasury was called on to 
propose a measure, he made many fair professions of regard 
for domestic industry, and reported a bill, which would have 
lefl the woollen manufacture — one of the most important of all 
— the one of all, to which protection at the present moment is 



38 

perhaps most necessary— entirely unprotected. The great in- 
Huence of the Executive was exerted to get through a bill upon 
this basis, and it was only by intense exertion and the most de- 
cided superiority in argument, that the friends of the country 
were enabled to make head against the combination of open 
and disguised enemies, and secure to this great interest a bare 
— perhaps, after all, an inadequate protection. The reckless 
tools of party would have sacrificed a capital of a hundred and 
fifty millions of dollars, and the happiness of the persons con- 
nected with it, without hesitation or scruple, to their miserable 
objects of personal ambition. 

2. The case is substantially the same with Internal Improve- 
ments — the other great feature in what has been appropriately 
termed the American System. Here too the President was 
pledged by his position in the country — by his professed opin- 
ions and by the known interest of his warmest original sup- 
porters, to the protecting policy; and here too we have seen, 
perhaps even more distinctly than in regard to the Tariff" — the 
predominance of the same wretched, time-serving, vacillating 
spirit tliat sacrifices every higher consideration to party man- 
agement and the hope of temporary popularity. In the message 
announcing the veto of the Maysville Road Bill, the President 
distinctly admitted the right of the General Government to 
make internal improvements of a national character, and at the 
same time negatived a road which would have formed a portion 
of the great thoroughfare between the sea-board and the in- 
terior — a national communication, one would think, — if any one 
in the country can ever deserve that epithet. The object seems 
to have been to propitiate the friends of Internal Improvement 
by the doctrines of the message, and its enemies by the mea- 
sures announced in it. The same system was pursued at the 
last session of Congress, when bills, involving precisely the 
same principles, were alternately rejected and approved by the 
President. The action of the Government on this subject has 
in fact, been so palpably, we may almost say ludicrously inco- 
herent, that it can hardly be accounted for, even upon the prin- 
ciple of party management, and must in many instances be at- 
tributed to the mere personal caprice of the despot. On the 
whole, however, the leaning of the Administration is adverse to 
the progress of internal improvement, and is apparently becom- 
ing more so from year to year. In fact, the President at the 
close of the late message accompanying the veto on the Bank, 
distinctly intimates, if his language is to be considered as con- 
veying any definite meaning, that the whole doctrine of the 



39 

protecting policy, in both its groat branches, is entirely false and 
ought to be al)aiidoned. 

It appears, thereture, that in regard to the great subjects of 
the Tariff' and Internal Improvements, Gen. Jackson has for- 
feited the pledges under which he came into office. He was 
elected as a friend of the American System: he has thus far 
given it a cold, vacillating, uncertain support, and there is rea- 
son to believe, that if re-elected, he will come out its open 
enemy. 

Under these circumstances we say to those citizens who 
are attached to the principles of the Protecting Policy, and 
whose interests are identified with its maintenance, who have 
hitherto supported General Jackson because they believed 
him to be fiiendly to their interests, and who have found 
themselves invariably disappointed by his proceedings, — Will 
you give your confidence again to a person who has once so 
grossly deceived you.-* Will you aid in re-electing a President 
who has forfeited all the pledges under which he was before 
elected? Should you do this, can you blame any one but your- 
selves if your establishments are broken up, your fortunes 
ruined, and yourselves turned adrift upon the world? 

We would say, in particular, to the citizens of the great state 
of PENNSYLVANIA— You made Gen. Jackson what he is ; 
you took him up when his nomination was considered as little 
better than a piece of solemn mockery, and placed him in the 
chair of the chief magistracy. He publicly promised, that if 
elected, he would serve but a single term. Scarcely was he 
warm in his seat, than he came to you, and begged a re-nom- 
ination. You generously gave it to him. How has he repaid 
all your partiality ? You held in your hands his repeated pledges 
that he was a firm and steady friend to your great interests. 
How have they been redeemed ? Was Mr. Mc Lane's plan of 
a Tariff Bill a very natural way of noticing the unanimous reso- 
lution of your Legislature in favor of the protecting policy ? or 
the Veto message that in favor of the Bank ? Can you, as 
men of good sense — of prudence — of honorable pride — continue 
to support a President who returns your civility by laying the 
axe at the root of all your establishments, and who, if he be re- 
elected, and persevere, as he doubtless will, in the same course, 
will carry desolation and poverty through your state ? We 
think not ; and the noble efforts which you are now making in 
all quarters to shake off the yoke seem to show that you are of 
the same opinion. 

We would say, in like manner, to the citizens of our 
neighboring state of NEW HAMPSHIRE— one of those 



40 

which are most deeply interested in the maintenance and 
success of the protecting system — How long will you permit 
yourselves to be misrepresented on the floor of Congress, and 
in your own Legislature — in the Presidential chair, as far as 
your influence extends in determining the incumbent — by men 
who are blind to your interest, or, rather, who sacrifice it with- 
out scruple to their own sordid policy ? Without the flocks of 
sheep that cover your pastures, and the manufactures that give 
employment to your sons and daughters, what would become 
of your population ? Would they not at once abandon you 
granite hills for the green savannahs of the West ? These flocks 
and these manufactures have been brought, by the measures 
adopted last winter, to the very verge of destruction. A further 
diminution of the protection hitherto granted them would com- 
plete the work. Will you, by giving your suffrages to the men 
who are pledged to pursue in every future Congress the same 
pernicious course, consent to depopulate your country, and 
reduce your farmers to beggary ? Make, once for all, the 
manly effort which alone is necessary to the recovery of your 
moral independence ; and let it not be said that the policy of 
one of the most intelligent and best-informed states of the 
Union shall be forever controlled by a single scurrilous news- 
paper. 

The same or similar remarks maybe addressed, with equal pro- 
priety, to the great agricultural states of the Middle and VVestern 
parts of the country, from New York to Louisiana. They all 
supported Gen. Jackson as a firm friend of American industry : 
they have found him treacherous, and they owe it to themselves 
not to give him the opportunity of deceiving them a second time 
To the Southern states, which are at present opposed to pro- 
tection, there is little to be said on this part of the subject, 
although even these, if they took a more correct view of their 
own interest, would find it as deeply involved in the maintenance 
of the system as that of any portion of the country. To the 
domestic producer, what, after all, can be more important than a 
domestic market .'' Massachusetts, with her immediate neigh- 
bors at the south and west, is, happily, sound. Maine, we trust, 
is at this moment giving proofs of her regeneration. 

Our object in these papers is rather to point out the errors in 
the conduct of the present Administration, than to exalt the merit 
of the candidates for the succession. It would be difficult, how- 
ever, to quit the subject of our domestic policy, without paying 
a tribute of respect to the extraordinary deserts of Mr. Clay in 
regard to this subject. This great statesman, by his exertions 
in Congress last winter, refreshed his reputation, and proved 



41 

that the progress of years has only matured his judgment with- 
out at all impairing the vigor and brilliancy of his eloquence. 
His speeches on the Tariff and the Public Lands are quite 
equal — in the opinion of some, superior — to the happiest etibrts 
of his earlier days. It was a dangerous experiment — with him, 
as well as with Mr. Adams — to return after so long an absence, 
and with so high a reputation to sustain, to the floor of Congress. 
Both stood the trial nobly, and have come out of it with aug- 
mented fame. When we see these distinguished men quitting 
their places at the head of the Executive department, and 
entering the legislative bodies of the Union only to take the 
lead, as if by general acknowledgement in these : — when we 
compare their arduous labors, their brilliant reports and speeches, 
their skilful management on this new theatre, with the daily 
exhibitions of vulgar violence and intellectual nothingness at 
the White House, we are struck with astonishment that an in- 
telligent people could have fallen into so strange an aberration 
of judgment as to give to its worthless tenant even a momentary 
preference over such competitors. This wretched delusion 
seems now to be rapidly passing off. The reign oi' common 
sense is apparently about to be restored, and whenever that 
happens, the reign of Jackson will of course terminate. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

THE INDIANS AND THE MISSIONARIES. 

This is the darkest chapter in our history. If it were possi- 
ble to draw a veil over it, we would gladly do so, for the honor 
of our country and of humanity. But it is not. The work of 
iniquity is still in progress. The only hope of arresting it before 
it reaches its consummation, must be founded in the awakening 
sense of justice of the people. The strongest appeals have been 
made repeatedly to the executive and legislative departments of 
the Government, as they are now constituted, but without effect. 
The judiciary has nobly taken its stand in defence of the right; 
but, without the co-operation of the executive, its interposition 
will probably be ineffectual. It is only by a change in the 
character of the Administration, and of the majorities in congress, 
that we can expect to redress this great wrong, and prevent the 
6 



43 

final extermination of a civilized and Christian community. If 
there were no other objection to our present rulers, this alone 
ought to be considered as decisive ; and it is therefore of the 
highest importance that the facts in the case should be constantly 
kept before the public mind. 

What, then, are these facts? The Cherokee Indians occupy 
a territory somewhat smaller than the state of Massachusetts, 
and situated at the point where the boundaries of Georgia, 
North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama approach each other — 
partly in each of these states, but principally in Georgia. The 
possession of this territory has been solemnly guarantied to them 
in a succession of treaties, first by Georgia herself, and subse- 
quently by the Government of the United States, those of the 
latter class beincr not less than sixteen in number. In all these 
treaties, they are expressly recognized as a distinct community; 
their rights of property and jurisdiction are formally admitted ; 
and it is stipulated that no citizen of the United States shall 
enter their territory without a passport. In all these treaties 
there are mutual concessions: the Cherokees make grants and 
promises in exchange for the guaranties and the promises which 
they receive. All these grants and promises so made by them 
have been faithfully executed — we have had the full benefit of 
ihem ; — it is not even pretended that there has been any breach 
of faith. The Supreme Court has declared that the treaties are 
valid and binding. Finally, the intercourse act of 1802 author- 
ises and requires the President to employ, if necessary, the mili- 
tary force of the country for the purpose of securing to the Indi- 
ans the rights and privileges to which, under these treaties, they 
are entitled. 

Such are the rights of the Indians. Let us look now at the 
manner in which they have been treated by Georgia and the 
General Government. In a time of perfect tranquillity — without 
a pretext even for complaint against the Cherokees — the state 
of Georgia, by a public act of her legislature, extends her juris- 
diction over them and their territory : in other words, declares 
that she is herself the rightful sovereign of a territory of which 
another community has had from time immemorial quiet pos- 
session, and which is guarantied to that community in a series 
of treaties by Georgia herself and the Union of which Georgia 
forms a part. Truly, a modest pretension ! But even this is 
not the worst. The object is to obtain, not merely the jurisdic- 
tion, but the property. Another act is passed authorizing the 
survey of ajl the lands not in the immediate occupation of the 
Indians, and their division into lots, for the purpose (Will pos- 
terity believe it ?) of distributing them by lottery among t hein- 



43 

habitants of the state. In order to render the quantity of land 
not included in this distribution as small as possible, the Indi- 
ans are subjected to personal disabilities, which must render 
their residence in their ancient abodes intolerable, and, if the 
system is continued, will compel them all to emigrate. 

Assailed in this unexampled manner by a stronger neighbor, 
whose aggressions they are wholly unable to resist by open 
force, the Cherokees appeal to the General Government, and 
invoke the execution of the laws and treaties by which their 
rights are secured. They appeal at different times to the three 
great departments, the Executive, the Legislative and the Ju- 
diciary. The Supreme Court answers their appeal with its 
usual prompt and yet prudent energy. In the first case in 
which the question came up — that of Corn Tassel, a prisoner, 
indicted for murder, a mandate was issued immediately, re- 
quiring the State of Georgia to appear in Court and defend 
the constitutionality of her proceedings. No sooner was the 
fact known, than the Legislature of Georgia, which was then 
in session, passed a set of resolutions, denying entirely the 
right of the Supreme Court to interfere with the course of her 
criminal jurisdiction, and requiring the Governor to resist any 
such interference by force. In open contempt of the authority 
of the Court, and with a disregard for the common feelings of 
humanity that makes the blood run cold, the prisoner — his trial 
still pending in the ordinary course of law — was ordered to 
execution and actually executed, or, in plain English, murdered 
under the forms of justice. When the case came on at Wash- 
ington, the State of Georgia made default: the Court, with the 
dignified moderation and correct sense of propriety which con- 
stantly marks their proceedings, took no notice of the contu- 
macious conduct of that state which was not regularly before 
them, and decided the case on, a point of form in her favor. 
The next year the affair came up a second time in the case of 
the Missionaries, and the Court, with a manly firmness, not 
less honorable to them than the steady impartiality which they 
had exhibited before, gave an unequivocal opinion against the 
constituticniality of the laws of Georgia. When that opinion 
was sent down for execution, the authorities of Georgia, in their 
usual spirit of insubordination, refused to carry it into effect, 
and actually retained and now hold in close confinement, 171 
the State Penitentiary TWO MINISTERS OF RELIGION 
— one of them a citizen of Massachusetts — under a process 
which the highest judicial authority of the United States has 
declared to be unconstitutional. 

Such has been the conduct of Georgia. In the mean time 



44 

what has the President done? The President is bound by the 
constitution and his oath of office, to see that the laws and 
treaties are faithfully executed, and as Ave have said, is author- 
ised and required by the Intercourse Act, to employ if necessary, 
the military force of the country, for the purpose of securing to 
the Indians the personal, political and territorial rights guaran- 
tied to them by the treaties. What then has the President 
done? — In what way has he interfered to check these violent 
and unconstitutional usurpations of power by Georgia, and to 
sustain t!)e Judiciary department in the rightful course of its 
constitutional functions? What sort of countenance and aid 
has he given to the feeble and distressed remnant of a once 
powerful people, who have come to him, in their uimcit nred — 
to invoke not merely the friendship for the beloved Cherokees, 
of which thev had received so many honied assurances, but the 
PLIGHTED PUBLIC FAITH of the Union? When thus 
called upon by the Cherokees, the President informed them, 
through his Secretary of War, that whether the proceedings of 
Georgia were or were not in accordance with the treaties, the 
United States could not and would not undertake to oppose 
them. When the Supreme Court declared these proceedings 
to be unconstitutional, the President's Secretary at ^Var at- 
tempted to refute the decision in a long manifesto, published in 
the semi-official paper called the Globe. — When the State of 
Georgia, in carrying her unconstitutional laws into execution, 
invaded the territory of the Cherokees, the President, instead 
of employing the military force of the country in their defence, 
actually withdrew a corps of troops which was previously sta- 
tioned there, and left them entirely at the mercy of their ene- 
mies, instead of lending them his countenance and aid in the 
unequal struggle in which they are engaged, he is continually 
laboring, through his agents, official and unofficial, to persuade 
them that they are in the wrong, that they cannot maintain their 
ground, and that they would do much better to quit their im-' 
provements — abandon their cultivated territory, and emigrate 
to a distant wilderness, two or three thousand miles off — in one 
word, that they would do better to abjure civilization and Chris- 
tianity, and return to barbarism. — When the State of Georgia, 
after setting at nought the claims of common humanity, and the 
majesty of the laws and constitution of the country, went still 
farther, and laid violent hands upon the persons of MINIS- 
TERS OF RELIGION, for no other cause than their zeal 
and activity in their sacred calling — the President not only did 
not, as he was bound to do by law — protect them, but actually 
withdrew from one of them the character of a functionary of 



45, 

the United States, which he had held hefore, for the express 
purpose of exposintr him entirely naked and defenceless — to the 
full sweep of the bfows that were aimed at him by the brutal 
agents of the tyranny of Georgia. 

Such has been the conduct of the President. Even Congress — 
we blush for the honor of the country, and of humanity, when 
we say it — even Congress has thus far been so completely en- 
veloped in the toils ot' party management, that it has been found 
impossible by the friends of the country, notwithstanding their 
unremitted, laborious, energetic and most praiseworthy efforts, 
to obtain even a resolution that it was expedient to maintain the 
Public Faith of the Union. 

Such are the facts in the case of the Indians and Missionaries : 
Let us now very briefly consider the character of these proceed- 
ings under the various aspects, in which thev naturally present 
themselves:— their PERFIDY: — their VIOLENCE: — their 
MEANNESS :— their BRUTALITY :— the alarming resistance 
to the constitutional authority of the Supreme Court : — the re- 
volting and outrageous defiance of the moral and religious feel- 
ings of the community. 

I. PERFIDY. — A whole series of solemn treaties negoci- 
ated and concluded, successively, duiing a period of fifty years, 
under all the Administrations that have held the power of the 
government since its organization, are openly violated, without 
the slightest pretext or apology. It is not pretended tliat we were 
surprised or forced into the conclusion of any of them. They 
were free, fair and equal compacts, or rather they were com- 
pacts in which the real advantage was entirely on our side. It 
is not pretended that they have not been observed in good faith 
by the Indians. The lands which they granted, have been oc- 
cupied and settled — the stipulations in our favor have all been 
executed — we have had the benefit of them to the last fraction. 
It is not even seriously pretended that the treaties were informal, 
although if such were the fact, it would furnish no excuse for 
the violation of a bona fide engagement, of which we have had 
the benefit. But it is not, as we have said, seriously pretended 
that the treaties are even informal. An objection of this des- 
cription was indeed put forward by Georgia, who meanly attempt- 
ed to pick a flaw in the form of an instrument of which she has 
had the benefit, for the sake of escaping from the payment of 
the consideration ; but the Supreme Court has put the extin- 
guisher at once upon this feeble and unmanly effort. There is 
not even the poor and stale plea of state necessity. It is not 
pretended that the observance of the treaties would be produc- 
tive of any material inconvenience either to Georgia or the 



46 

United States. The immediate motive for violating them is, to 
procure for Georgia the opportunity of distributing the Cherokee 
land by lottery among her citizens. The proceeding is an act 
of open, avowed, unblushing, deliberate, premeditated NA- 
TION \L PERFIDY. 

Is this a light thing ? Are the people of the United States 
prepared, by continuing their present agents in power, to give 
their sanction to and take upon themselves the responsibility 
for this monstrous abuse of authority .'' We answer for them 
boldly, emphatically and decidedly, NO ; a thousand times 
over, NO. The PUBLIC FAITH MUST AND SHALL 
BE PRESERVED. The unprincipled and reckless tools 
of party, who are endeavoring to fasten upon our national 
character the stamp of indelible dishonor, by the violation of 
these treaties, must and shall give way to men who have at 
least the common honesty to feel and acknowledge the obliga- 
tion of a contract. 

2. A^OLENCE and MEANNESS. Independently of the 
positive engagements which we are under to the Indians ; 
were there no relation between them and us, but that which 
is created by the law of nature and the fact of neighborhood: — 
the proceedings towards them are such, that they can hardly be 
paralleled even in the history of barbarous nations. There 
no doubt is now and always has been a great deal of injustice and 
violence in the world. Wars have been carried on ; — states 
have been invaded and conquered for the mere gratification of 
personal ambition. In turning over the blood-stained rolls of 
history, the friends of humanity must too frequently 

Learn with horrent brow to rate 



What millions died that C'iEsar might be great. 

But in almost all the instances on record, even of gross and 
substantially unprovoked aggression, there is at least some 
pretext put forward by the aggressor, which, if true, would in 
some degree excuse the outrage. Even in the celebrated case 
of the partition of Poland, which in form approaches perhaps 
more nearly to the present than any other ; a case in which as 
in this, three prosperous and powerful states combined to par- 
cel out among themselves, the territory of a weak and unoffend- 
ing neighbor, there was at least a pretence of state necessity. 
The transaction was justified by the partitioning powers, on 
the ground of the inconvenience and danger which they suffer- 
ed from the troubles which habitually disturbed the interior of 
Poland. The proclamations that were issued, are filled with 
loud complaints of injuries and insults received from that dan- 



47 

gerous government. They breathe an edifying tone of justice 
and humanity — Russia, Austria and Prussia, if you believe 
them, are three peaceable and well-disposed powers, who have 
combined to abate a common nuisance. All this we know, 
was false and hollow ; but it showed at least some sense of 
shame in the parties to the outrage ; some disposition to as- 
sume a virtue although they had it not : — to discharge that 
tribute of hypocrixy which vice habitually pays to virtue. But 
that a state, claiming to be civilized and christian, should, in a 
time of profound peace, without even a pretence of injury or 
provocation, appropriate to itself the sovereignty over a weak- 
er neighboring- community, destroy its political existence, sub- 
ject its members to the most atrocious indignities, and distribute 
their territory by lottery among its own people ! — This, we 
confess, appears to us to be an entirely new case. We have 
paid some attention to political and diplomatic history, but we 
have met with no other exactly like it. 

When we say that Georgia puts forward no pretences in 
justification of her proceedings, we mean that she makes no 
allegations of injury or fraud on the other side, which, if well 
founded, would justify her course. The attempts at apology 
which she has in fact made are of such a kind as rather ag- 
gravate than extenuate the injustice of her conduct. She 
says, for example, that when she took possession of her terri- 
tory, she found the aboriginal inhabitants barbarians, and be- 
came immediately their rightful sovereign, because a civilized 
community possesses a natural right of sovereignty over its 
barbarous neighbors. The right thus acquired she ceded 
away in a series of solemn treaties. She now claims the right 
of rescinding these treaties, and resuming the sovereignty which 
had been granted away by them. Why ? Because the Indi- 
ans are now civilized. Such — if our readers will believe us— 
is the actual, bona fide intent and meaning of the language of 
the judges of Georgia, assembled in convention to decide upon 
the case of Tassel. ^ Are the ^authorities of Georgia in earnest, 
or are they sharpening the sting of oppression by a bitter and 
criminal mockery ? We will not trust ourselves to comment 
seriouslv upon such reasoning. It would be impossible to 
keep within the limits of moderation which are fixed by the 
dignity of the parties to this great cause. 

The attack of Georgia upon the Cherokees is therefore des- 
titute even of a plausible pretence of justice. And let it be 
observed that her pretensions extend much farther than they 
could be carried by conquest in the ordinary forms of civilized 
warfare. The law of nations is not understood to permit a 



48 

conquering people to take advantage of its success for the pur- 
pose of appropriating the territory and reducing to subjection 
the persons of the conquered. These are the practices of bar- 
barous communities : — they were the practices of the northern 
hordes that overran the Roman empire. The principles of 
public law, as established by the practice of civilized nations, 
only permit tiie conqueror to proceed until he has reduced his 
enemy to terms, and obtained satisfaction for the injury which 
he has suffered. If he go beyond this, he puts himself in the 
wrong. It appears, the.efore, that Georgia, in a time of pro- 
found peace, and without even a pretence of provocation, has 
proceeded, in her aggressions upon the Cherokees infinitely be- 
yond the point which would have been authorized by actual 
conquest, in a war waged for a sufficient cause. 

And then the meanness — the paltry, dastardly, pitiful meanness 
of the whole transaction. A man of real power, and who has 
withal a single spork of the lofty and generous spirit which so 
naturally accompanies a consciousness of strength, scorns to 
use his advantages, either in his public or private concerns, for 
the purpose of crushing the weak and unoffending. He would 
feel himself dishonored forever by such conduct. So true is this 
sentiment to nature that we find it exhibiting itself even in 
children. An overgrown lubber, who should undertake to 
treat with harshness an unoftending school-fellow of smaller 
size, would be hooted out of every village in the country. But 
what do we see in this affair.' Three or four prosperous and 
powerful states, numbering on an average not less than half a 
million souls each, backed by a Union of twenty-four sove- 
reign states and thirteen million inhabitants, are pouncing with 
all their combined strength upon a little peaceful society, com- 
posed of some fifteen thousand persons, incapable, of couise, of 
offering the least resistance, or of defending themselves in any 
way but by an appeal to the sixteen treaties in which these very 
aggressors have solemnly guarantied their political existence 
and the integrity of their territory. Is there an honorable man 
in the country whose cheek is not on fire with shame when he 
feels that, as a citizen of the United States he is unconsciously a 
party to such a transaction? But even this is not the worst. 

3. BRUTALITY.— Mean and pitiful as it is in all cases 
for an individual or a nation to abuse power for the purpose of 
injuring the feeble, there is in this aflair a feature of a still more 
revolting character. These Cherokees are not merely a peace- 
ful and unoffending little community, but they are a community 
of a very peculiar and interesting character. They are among 
the last remnants of the once powerful native race that in former 



49 

days occupied the whole country: they are the only tribe of this 
great family that has made any considerable advances in civ- 
ilization. It has often been doubted whether it were possible to 
induce these natives to assume the habits that belong to Euro- 
pean culture; and, until within a short time, the general opinion 
was decidedly in the negative. For two centuries in succes- 
sion the government and people of the United Stales have been 
ursing, entreating, preaching, praying, compelling them, as it 
were, to come within the pale, but all in vain. At length, a 
single tribe takes us at our word, and comes in. They adopt 
our religion, form of government, dress, manners and customs; 
learn our language, make an alphabet for their own; rise, in 
short, very nearly to a level with ourselves in all the arts and 
accomplishments of civilized life. A community which has risen 
in this way from civilization to barbarism, in the life-time of a 
single generation, is a great moral and political curiosity. Their 
history forms a very valuable addition to the experiments that 
have been made upon the fortunes of our race. Every en- 
lightened man would, for this reason — independently of any 
other circumstance — watch their further progress with peculiar 
interest, and would anxiously desire that no unfortunate acci- 
dent might interfere with it. How, then, do we treat them? 
How do we — a civilized and Christian community — conduct 
ourselves towards this tribe of barbarians, whom wo have suc- 
ceeded in converting into a civilized and Christian community 
like ourselves.' Georgia says to them. Gentlemen, we have 
succeeded in converting you from a tribe of barbarians into a 
civilized and Christian community like ourselves, and to show 
you the satisfaction we feel at your success and our own, we 
proceed to appropriate your country, confiscate your property, 
subject your persons to atrocious indignities, and destroy your 
political existence. They appeal for redress to the government 
of the United States. The government tells them — What? 
That it cannot and will not protect them — that, whether 
Georgia be right or wrong, she must have her way, and that 
they had much better quit their country, emigrate to a distant 
wilderness on the borders of the Red River, and there resume 
their former modes of life. Strange, astonishing — incredible 
as it may appear, after we have labored two centuries to civilize 
these Indians, and have at last succeeded with a single tribe, 
the first salutation which we address to them is a recommenda- 
tion — what do we say.' — a peremptory injunction, issued in 
contempt of a whole series of treaties, to return to barbarism. 
And all this for the noble purpose of distributing a few more 
acres of land by lottery among the inhabitants of a state where 
there is now hardly one white family to the square mile ! 
7 



50 

4. But the most important and alarming aspect under which 
we can look at these proceedings, is in their relation to the 
constitutional autliority of the supreme court. We have now 
reached that fearful crisis in our history, when a few months 
will decide whether the constitution and with it the Union of 
the states is to stand or fall. It is useless to attempt to conceal 
from ourselves that, if Georgia carries her point against the 
supreme court in this great case, the authority of that tribunal, 
and with it the basis of all our institutions, is destroyed forever. 
The decision of this question will depend upon the result of the 
election of President. At the next term of the supreme court 
to be held at Washington next winter, a return will be made 
of the refusal of Georgia to execute the decree of last winter, 
and the supreme court will then, agreeably to the provisions of the 
statute, address a precept to the marshal of Georgia, requiring 
him to execute the decree himself, and release the missionaries 
from the penitentiary. Should we have in office at that time a 
President who has the intelligence to know, and the manly 
firmness to do, his duty, Georgia will not venture to resist: the 
missionaries will be liberated: — the Cherokees will be main- 
tained in the rights secured to them by treaty, and the whole 
affair will pass ofi' without further trouble. If the present in- 
cumbent should be re-elected, and Georgia should feel that 
she is sustained and encouraged by the very power whose duty 
it is to arrest her mad course, she will probably resist: — Jack- 
son will refuse to employ the military force of the Union in aid 
of the court, as he has already refused to employ it in the ex- 
ecution of the intercourse act: — the decree will not be executed: 
— the reign of law will terminate : — that of terror and violence will 
commence; and with it will commence for us the Ions: series of 
internal commotions, proscriptions, confiscations, — war.", foreign 
and domestic, Avith all their frightful accompaniments and con- 
sequences, — which make up the history of most other nations, 
and from which, iu the goodness of Providence, we have thus 
far been almost wholly exempt. 

How fearful to reflect that such immense national interests are 
staked upon the almost fortuitous results of a popular election, 
which is to take place v.ithin six weeks throughout the whole 
country ! — Are the wise and good — the fathers of families, who 
wish to bequeath to their children the same blessings which 
they inherited themselves from a virtuous and patriotic ancestry, 
sufHciently alive to the emergency of the crisis? Are they 
straining every nerve with the intense anxiety that men ought 
to feel who know that every thing valuable is at hazard? 

5. There is still one consideration connected with this sub- 



51 

ject, more solemn than any to which we have hitherto adverted. 
We have seen in this affair the authorities of Georgia and the 
President of the United States combining to violate the respect 
due to the sacred character of a minister of religion, with a 
grossness hardly to be paralleled even in the history of barba- 
rous communities. We have seen the MISSIONARIES, af- 
ter having been not merely authorized, but invited, encouraged 
and urged by the government to prosecute their labors of love 
and piety in these remote regions, suddenly torn trom their 
homes — dragged IN CHAINS and at the imminent risk of 
their lives, through the wilderness, subjected to a mock trial, 
and then committed to the PENITENTIARY— and all this 
without their having been guilty of the slightest offence against 
the public peace or the laws and constitution of the country. 
We have seen this course of more than brutal violence continued 
after the highest judicial authority of the country had solemnly 
declared their innocence. 

Is this again a trifling thing? Will the christian people of 
the United States give their sanction, by placing him again in 
ofiice, to the conduct of a President who treats the ministers of 
the christian religion with open outrage — loads them with chains 
— drags them from their peaceful homes to prison — commits 
them in defiance of law like common criminals to the Peniten- 
tiary, and violently keeps them there against the decision of 
the highest law authority affirming their innocence? For 
throughout this whole business we are to recollect that the real 
difficulty lies not in the perversity of Georgia, who would not 
dare to act unless she felt herself supported at head-quarters, 
but in the contumacy of the President, who tacitly and openly 
bears her out in all her violence. Will the people then sanction 
these proceedings by continuing the President in office? Once 
more we answer for them NO — a thousand times over, NO. 

On this topic it would be vain and idle to enlarge: The min- 
isters of the christian religion detained against law like common, 
criminals in the Penittntiary ! All the eloquence of Demosthenes 
and Patrick Henry could add nothing to the effect of such a sen- 
tence. Gen. Jackson will feel it to his cost at the polls. 

One of these ministers of religion, Dr. Butler, is a citizen of 
this Commonwealth. He owes allegiance to Massachusetts, 
and Massachusetts in turn is bound to protect him at home and 
abroad from illegal violence. He is now violently detained in 
prison by the authorities of Georgia, in defiance of a decree of 
the Supreme Court declaring his innocence. If this violence 
should be continued after the Court shall have ordered its own 
officers to execute the decree, and the civil process shall be 



** .'1 

04 



entirely at an end, will it not be time for Massachusetts too to 
hetr'in to think of her reserved rights? If the Government of 
the United States cannot or will not protect our most respected 
citizens in the exercise of the highest and most solemn functions 
from the Penitentiary, will it not be time for us to begin to think 
of taking their protection into our own hands? 

13ut we must here finish this too long chapter. We cannot 
conclude without expressing our admiration of the noble firm- 
ness which has been shown by the Cherokees, in refusing to 
accept the insidious proposals to emigrate, which have been 
made to them by the General Government. With the fragments 
of sixteen violated treaties scattered round them, is it not some- 
thing like mockery for the government of the United States 
even to ask them to conclude a seventeenth.-' Can it, in good 
earnest, reasonably be supposed that they would be tempted 
by any terms, however apparently favorable.' No; — let them 
perish — if it must be so — in defence of their rights — by their 
fire-sides — on the tombs of their fathers ! Let them fall — if it 
must be so — as so many of the best and bravest of all nations 
and ages — as so many of our own forefathers, fell before them — 
fighting manfully the good fight of innocence against oppres- 
sion ! How can they ever find a nobler or a happier way of 
passing from the troubled scenes of this transitory world to the 
permanent glories of a better? — But we do not apprehend this 
result. The supreme court, with a manly firmness not inferior 
to their own, has already declared in their favor: the People are 
preparing to sustain the sentence at the polls: — the agents of 
Georgia, who have bullied and blustered at their ease while 
they knew that there was no danger, will make great haste to 
draw in their horns, when they find themselves encountered by 
the power of the United States in the hands of a President who 
knows and W'ill do his dutv. The Cherokees will be supported 
in ihcir rightful pretensions. THE PUBLIC FAITH MUST 
AND WILL BE PRESERVED. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BANK. 



The reputation and fortune of the persons composing the ad- 
ministration of any government seem to be, for the time being, 
identified with the welfare of the nation ; and, by whatever 
means they may have obtained power, one would suppose that 



53 

they would naturally exercise it, in their own interest, with a 
view to the public good. It is, therefore, almost as dithcult to 
comprehend as it is to excuse the sort of demoniac frenzy with 
which our present rulers have been, ever since their introduc- 
tion into office, laboring to destroy ALL the great principles of 
the national prosperity, and to subvert ALL the most important 
and useful institutions of government. In the preceding chap- 
ters, we have seen them carrying confusion and corruption into 
all the departments of the public service, by treating the offices, 
from the highest to the lowest, as the SPOILS OF VICTORY: 
—arresting the progress of DOMESTIC INDUSTRY and 
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT:— prostrating the HONOR 
of the country at the feet of the British ministry: — openly vio- 
lating the PUBLIC FAITH with the Indian tribes:— outrag- 
ing DECENCY and RELIGION in their treatment of the 
missionaries : — shaking the authority of the SUPREME 
COURT to its very foundation by abttting the proceedings of 
Georgia; and by the abuse of the appointing and veto powers 
in a great measure neutralizing the constitutional action of both 
branches of CONGRESS. To complete the picture, we have 
now to see them aiming a blow at the BANK OF THE 
UNITED STATES, which, if not checked in time, as we 
confidently trust that it will be, by the returning good sense and 
patriotic ff^eling of the people, will throw the CURRENCY 
into disorder, and condemn a large proportion of the most in- 
dustrious and honorable citizens among us to immediate BANK- 
RUPTCY. 

We shall not undertake to say which of the various impolitic, 
illeiial and unconstitutional proceedings of the present Adminis- 
tration will prove, in the end, most injurious to the country; 
but the one which will he attended with the greatest amount of 
immediate and therefore certain and irremediable evil, is prob- 
ably the destruction (if the Bank. Fortunately this is also the 
one which more than any other has engaged the public atten- 
tion. The merits of the question have been, for two years past, 
discussed in every form, and the importance of sustaining the 
Bank set forth with such clearness of illustration and irresistible 
force of argument in reviews and other journals, reports of com- 
mittees and speeches of members of congress, that tliere is 
really no room or excuse for mistake. We may mention par- 
ticularly, as one of the ablest arguments that have appeared 
upon this subject, the speech delivered by Mr. Webster in the 
senate upon the reception of the veto message, and which has 
lately been reported for the newspapers. After so many ela- 
borate and copious discussions, it may almost appear superflu' 



54 

ous to treat this subject in the cursory form which belongs to 
these essays. But it ought not to be wholly omitted in a gen- 
eral review of the conduct of the Administration; and if our 
hasty suggestions should affect only one mind that has not yet 
been reached by the logic and eloquence of abler champions 
of the good cause, our efforts may not, in the present divided 
state of the people, be without a salutary and important in- 
fluence. 

The National Bank, though not properly apolitical institution, 
is one of the most important and valuable instruments that are 
used in the practical administration of the government. It 
serves three great purposes: — It is the financial agent of the 
Executive for all its receipts and payments: It aids in regulating 
the currency, as far as this is composed of paper, by acting as 
a check upon the local banks, and distributing through the 
Union a safe and uniform emission of notes: and thirdly: It 
performs, but in a much more effectual and extensive way than 
any similar institution, the usual functions of a Bank, in ac- 
commodating the public with loans of capital. For each and 
ail of these purposes, the existence of the National Bank is, in a 
manner, indispensable; and, were it even possible to get along 
without it (as it certainly would not be), the sudden destruction 
of the existing Bank, under the present economical circum- 
stances of the country, would be attended with an extent of 
individual suffering and loss of property unexampled perhaps 
in the history of civilized communities. 

When the first bank was first proposed, soon after the adoption 
of the present constitution, the question was started whether the 
governm.ent possessed, under that instrument, the power to es- 
tablish such an institution. The political parties of the day 
were divided upon this, as they were upon most other questions 
that came before the nation, — not so much perhaps because the 
matter was in itself very doubtful, as because parties that exist 
on other accounts seek, and of course find, in every new topic 
a new occasion for diflerence. The party which had been ori- 
ginally opposed to the Bank possessed the almost undisputed 
control of the legislative and executive departments of the gov- 
ernment when the charter expired, and it was not at the time 
renewed. Experience, however, soon satisfied the most intelli- 
gent and powerful men among them that their theories on the 
subject were erroneous, and that a Bank was absolutely indis- 
pensable to the safe and prosperous conduct of the public affairs. 
Within a few years after the expiration of the charter of the 
former one, another was accordingly established, with a 
larger capital and more extended powers. Mr. Madison, 



55 

then President of the United States, and one of the most active 
opponents of the other Bank, gave to this his cordial approbation. 
In the mean time, the institution had received the sanction of 
the Supreme Court ; and the tv/o great parties which had Ibr- 
merly divided the country, and which comprehended all the ac- 
tive citizens, being both in favor of it, it went into operation 
with the unanimous assent and concurrence of the^ whole 
people. 

The results have been such as might have been expected 
from such auspices. The currency of the country, which, at 
the time when the Bank was established, was in a state of utter 
and apparently irremediable disorder, was rapidly restored to 
the sound and healthy condition, in which it has been ever since 
and is now. The agency of the Bank, if not the only cause 
that operated in the production of this most salutary change, 
was unquestionably one of the most important and effective. 
Having lent its aid in reforming the currency, the Bank enter- 
ed on its regular course of official duty, which it has ever since 
pursued with exemplary success. As the fiscal agent of the 
Executive, it has exhibited a remarkable intelligence, efficiency, 
energy, and, above all, INDEPENDENCE. This— as we 
shall presently see — has been its real crime. As the regula- 
tor of the currency, it has furnished the country with a safe, 
convenient and copious circulating medium, and prevented the 
mischiefs that would otherwise result from the insecurity of the 
local banks. As a mere institution for loaning money, it has 
been, as it were, the Providence of the less wealthy sections 
of the Union. It has distributed with unsparing hand almost 
the whole of its vast capital throughout the western states, 
where capital, at any moderate rate of interest, would be other- 
wise nearly inaccessible. The extent of the benefit conferred 
in this way, not on the west only, but on the whole country, 
will never be fully appreciated except, should that unfortunately 
happen, by its loss. Through its dealings in exchange at 
home and abroad, the Bank has materially facilitated the opera- 
tions of our foreign and domestic trade. The important advan- 
tages which have thus been derived from this institution have 
been unattended by any countervailing evil. As its term ad- 
vanced, and its officers acquired additional experience, it has 
been constantly gaining on the public favor. There has been 
no suspicion of abuse; not a lisp of complaint has been heard 
on any account throughout the country; and since it has been 
thought necessary, for electioneering purposes, to raise a clamor 
against the institution, it is really curious, as well as melancho- 
ly, to see how low the party managers have been content to 



56 

stoop— to what wretched and pitiful shifts they have been driv- 
en, in order to find any thing tliat could be tortured, by any art 
or sophistry, into the appearance of rnal-administration. 

Such was the condition of the Bank, and such the state of 
the public opinion in regard to it when, in an evil hour, the 
reins of government were entrusted to the hands of our present 
rulers. Tiie hostility of Jackson to the institution was not 
known or known only to confidential friends, previously to his 
election, nor was it exhibited in the inaugural address: but in 
his first message to Congress, he came out with an open denun- 
ciation of the Bank as it is now constituted, and a recommenda- 
tion of another, apparently of a totally different kind, the par- 
ticular character of which, as it has not been explained, it 
would of course be useless to discuss. The motives which led 
to this extraordinary proceeding, are not distinctly known. — 
^Yhen we connect the time of its appearance with that of the 
transactions in relation to the branch at Portsmouth, where the 
independence of the officers of the Bank defeated the attempts 
of the executive to make it subservient to party purposes, it 
seems not improbable, especially considering the well-known 
character of Jackson, that we are to look to these transactions 
as the moving cause of his determination to destroy the institu- 
tion. We have accordingly stated above that the INDEPEiV- 
DENCE of the president and directors of the bank is their 
only real crime. It is probable, however, that the party mana- 
gers also calculated that they should gain something for elec- 
tioneering purposes, by endeavoring to revive the prejudices 
that were formerly entertained on this subject by the old re- 
publican party, and by making use of it as a pretext for appeal- 
ing to the worst passions of the uninformed part of the people. 
This motive is as exactly in keeping- with the character of Van 
Buren as the former one is with that of his master. The im- 
mediate interest of the local banks may also perhaps have been 
brought to bear in a slight degree on the question. Such 
taken together were probably the causes of this proceeding ; 
and the extent to which each may have operated in producing 
the result, we must leave to the reader to decide. At all 
events, the ostensible motives assigned in the first message, in 
the re|)orts of the committee of the House of Representatives, 
in the Veto message, and in the party newspapers, were obvious- 
ly put forward merely ad caplandum, as we shall presently have 
occasion to show. 

The denunciation in the first message to Congress was un- 
accompanied by any reasons, excepting the naked and shame- 
less assertion, that the Bank had not accomplished the purposes 



57 

for which it was instituted. In the second message to Congress, 
delivered a ye;ir after, the denunciation was renewed in the 
same laconic style, and it was repeated for the third time in 
the message that was sent to Congress at the opening of the 
last session. In the mean while, however, the members of the 
cabinet had been changed, and there was a pretty important 
new feature in the aspect of the Executive communications on 
this subject. On the day following the delivery of the message, 
a report was transmitted from the Secretary of the Treasury, 
containing a regular and elaborate argument in favor of re-char- 
tering the Bank. This circumstance, taken in connexion with 
some passages in the message, of which the meaning might be 
considered doubtful, were supposed by some persons to indicate 
that Jackson had, under the influence of better counsels, re- 
vised his opinion and was preparing to retrace his steps. For 
ourselves, we were too well aware of his violence and wrong- 
headedness to entertain any such hopes. At all events, how- 
ever, it was clearly the policy of the friends of the Bank that 
the subject should be brought up and carried through Congress 
at the last session; in order that if Jackson should dare to re- 
alize his threats, the people might have an opportunity of re- 
versing his decision before it could be carried into effect. The 
proceedings of Congress are too recent to require to be here 
recapitulated. Though the report of the examining committee 
of the House of Representatives was formally against the Bank, 
the general result of their labors was decidedly favorable. The 
majority were triumphantly refuted by Mr. Mc Duffie in the 
name of the minority, and then in a separate report JONA- 
THAN RUSSELLED by Mr. Adams. Van Buren's 'pre- 
monitory symptom' skulked olT lame and whining from the field. 
3Ir- Clayton has not yet found that ' convenient opportunity ' 
for replying to Mr. Adams, which the opponents of the latter 
gentlemen are not unfrequently a long time waiting for. The 
bill for re-chartering the Bank passed triumphantly through both 
houses. The President returned it with the celebrated Veto 
Message. 

This document — when Jackson shall have been, as we trust 
he will be within a very few months, remanded to the Hermi- 
tage: — when the people shall have long since recovered from 
the temporary delusion that placed him in office: — when most 
of the messages and other papers to which his name has been 
affixed, shall have been sunk by their leaden dullness in the 
gulf of oblivion: — this document — the Veto Message — will 
probably be kept in memory, and often appealed to as a curious 
example of the extent to which, at the commencement of the 

8 



58 

nineteenth century, the elected chief magistrate of a free, 
civilized and enlightened people dared to insult the common 
sense and moral feeling of his constituents. The indignant 
outcry of the people has already passed judgment upon this un- 
worthy paper and its author, so that it is nearly as superfluous 
as it would be, within the limits of the present essay, impossible 
to examine its contents in detail. We shall confine ourselves 
to a few remarks upon those parts in which the subject is treated 
under an economical point of view. 

On this head, the doctrine of the President has at least the 
merit of novelty. He gravely informs Congress that it is an 
act of intolerable oppression, to furnish a man with capital to 
carry on his business, on the ordinary condition of paying in- 
terest for the use of it. lago counsels Cassio in the play to 
put ' money in his pocket ' as an almost infallible method of 
succeeding in all his enterprises. Gen. Jackson is evidently 
of opinion that to put money in a man's pocket, is to subject 
him to great and grievous embarrassment. — Now the Bank has, 
it seems, been guilty of the high crime and misdemeanor of 
placing sundry millions of foreign capital in the pockets of the 
people of the United States, and also sundry millions of capital 
belonging to the Atlantic cities, in the pockets of the West. 
This is not all. Will posterity believe that in this humane and 
enlightened age, the Bank, as the representative of the owners 
of this foreign and eastern capital, has the barbarity to demand 
of the western people, in whose pockets it is placed, the pay- 
ment of six per cent, interest by the year for the use of it? 
The fact would undoubtedly be considered incredible, did it not 
rest upon the unquestionable authority of the President of the 
United States. ' The debt due to the bank by the West,' says 
the Veto Message, ' is principally a debt to the eastern and 
foreign stockholders; the interest they pay upon it (:nark the 
villany!) is carried into the eastern states and to England, and 
is a burden upon their industry (poor souls!) and a drain of 
currency which no country can bear without inconvenience and 
occasional distress.' It seems then, from the President's show- 
ing, that these poor people of the West are not allowed, as honest 
men should be, to appropriate the earnings of others to their 
own use, without fee or reward, as the SPOILS OF VICTO- 
RY, but are actually subjected to the enormous imposition of 
paying upon all the money they borrow, the charge of six per 
cent, annual interest. This, to be sure, is ' flat burglary.' 
The Bank permits itself to be made the instrument of this work 
of iniquity and oppression, and is of course fairly obnoxious 
to the execration of all the friends of justice and humanity. 



But how is the mischief to be remeuied ? — If the President 
is admirable in discovering the nature of the disease, he is no 
less admirable in applying the cure. These Western states, 
who are thus oppressed with a loan of thirty millions of dollars, 
and who are subjected to the intolerable hardship and burden 
of paying six per cent, interest upon it are to be relieved — how, 
gentle reader? — by being suddenly called upon to pay to these 
same eastern and foreign stockholders, instead of the intolera- 
ble six per cent, interest, the whole hundred per cent, capital 
within two or three years. 

Is not this excellent.^ — Is not this creditable to the govern- 
ment and country .'' — Is not this a fine piece of work to go out 
to Europe as a specimen of the perfection to which the science 
of political economy has been carried by the ' freest and most 
enlightened nation on the globe?' — It is an act of oppression to 
furnish a man with capital to carry on his business: the way to 
relieve him is to compel him to pay it back again at all sacri- 
fices and at a moment's notice. These are discoveries of which 
Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin never dreamed. 
Smith, Say and Ricardo might have pored over their books for 
centuries, without ever stumbling upon them. The document 
which contains them, will doubtless be valued, when the Wealth 
of Nations and the Report on Manufactures are forgotten. Did 
it never occur to the worthies of the Kitchen Cabinet, in the 
course of their learned speculations on capital and credit, to 
ask themselves the questions: Who compels the western peo- 
ple to borrow this money, if they do not want it? — If they wish 
to relieve themselves from the burden of the interest by paying 
the principal, why cannot they do it as well without the destruc- 
tion of the Bank as with it? 

Seriously : — If this incredible nonsense were found in the 
first attempt of a college freshman, a reader of ordinary intel- 
ligence would shruo" his shoulders, pronounce the writer an in- 
corrigible blockhead, and pass the work over in silence as below 
criticism. When we see it presented by the Chief Magistrate 
of the country, in a public message to Congress, as a ground 
of action on the most important subjects, involving the interests 
of the whole people, and the private fortunes of thousands of 
the citizens, the case becomes alarming. What are we to think 
of the capacity and information of the President and his ad- 
visers? — If we suppose them sincere, what lamentable igno- 
rance, we will not say of political science, but of the common 
business of practical life ! — If, on the other hand, we suppose 
them to possess but a moderate share of the most ordinary in- 
formation, what barefaced imposition ! what profound contempt 
for the intelligence of the people ! 



60 

The objections of the committee of the House of Represent- 
atives to the administration of the Bank, are about upon a level 
in importance and justice, with those of the Kitchen Cabinet to 
the renewal of the charter. One would suppose that the com- 
mittee had been purposely laboring to make themselves ridicu- 
lous. The Bank is, it seems, very strongly suspected of dealing 
in American coin. Really, and is there not also room to sus- 
pect that it has made loans and issued notes? Here are more 
violations of the charter., which ought not to have escaped the 
vigilance of the committee. Again : the branches have made 
drafts upon the parent Bank, and, fearful to relate ! these drafts 
have been struck from a copperplate engraving. Further still: 
The Bank has made donations to sundry lamplighters and news- 
paper carriers every new year's day, and various interned im- 
provements on its real estate, by putting on new locks on doors 
and desks when the old ones were worn out, and mending win- 
dows when the glasses were broken: — the whole to the great 
terror and dismay of the good citizens, and in open violation of 
the charter and of the laws in such cases made and provided! 

Such in sober earnest and with a very slight exaggeration, 
which does not affect the merits of the question, are the charges 
gravely preferred by a committee of the House of Representa- 
tives against the Bank, as motives for refusing the renewal of 
the charter, and cautiously submitted, without any opinion upon 
their siiffieiejicij , to the judgment of the House. It is satisfactory 
to reflect that the representatives of the people, who permitted 
themselves to take so unworthy a course, not only failed in car- 
rying with them the assent of the house, but received in public, 
at the hands of their chairman, the indignant, bitter and eflec- 
tive reproof which their conduct so justly merited. The com- 
mon sense of the nation is now fully possessed of the subject, 
and has passed a sentence on the proceedings of Messrs. Clay- 
ton and Cambreleng, which can never be reversed. 

The spirit that breathes through all these denunciations of the 
Bank is, if possible, still worse than the reasoning contained in 
them. For the first time, perhaps, in the history of civilized 
communities, the Chief Magistrate of a great nation — the natural 
and chosen guardian of order and the public peace — is found 
appealing to the worst passions of the uninformed part of the 
people, and endeavoring to stir up the poor against the rich. 
If the Bank should be re-chartered, " the humble members of so- 
ciety, the farmers, mechanics and laborers, who have neither 
the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, 
have a right," says the veto message, "to complain of the in- 
justice of the government." The party journals are constantly 



61 

harping on the same string. The Bank is denounced as a monied 
aristocracy, subsisting in bloated arrogance upon the plunder 
of the poor. Are these foul-mouthed calumniators so profoundly 
ignorant of every fact connected with the subjects which they 
are every day writing upon, as not to know that it is the precise 
purpose of banks to furnish to the persons of moderate fortune 
whom the President is pleased to designate &s " the humble 
members of society " the opportunity of associating together, 
and accommodating each other with mutual loans: — that these 
associations are, as we have already remarked, tlie Providence 
of the less wealthy portions of the Union and of the community: 
— that a large proportion of the stock of all the banks is held 
by the representatives of widows and orphans, who could not 
otherwise readily find so good an investment for their property: 
— that the rich can, without difficulty, accommodate themselves 
in other ways, and that it would be to them a matter of entire 
indifference if every bank in the country, national and local, were 
struck out of existence tomorrow? Are they ignorant, we ask, 
of these notorious and acknowledged truths? — No, they are not 
— but they think, or hope, that by boldly misrepresenting facts, 
and perpetually stimulating the vicious propensities of the mass 
of the people, they shall be able to obtain the number of votes 
necessary to continue them in office, and secure for another 
term the possession of the SPOILS OF VICTORY. Such 
is the object ; and, in the Jackson code of morality, the end 
sanctifies the means : ALL'S FAIR IN POLITICS. 

If there could possibly be any thing worse than the spirit and 
temper of these proceedings, it would be the detestable system 
of PERSONAL SLANDER by which they are supported. 
Because a senator of the L^nited States stands up in his place 
to sustain one of the most valuable and important institutions 
of the country against an attack notoriously carried on as a 
mere electioneering manoeuvre, he is charged at once by a 
hundred presses with BRIBERY. In a late number of the 
Washington Globe, we remarked an article headed Political 
3Io7-alitij, and introduced by the following verses, which were 
placed at the head as an epigraph : 

Oil for a whip in every honest hand, 

To lash the rascals naked through the land 1 

On looking farther, we found that these rascals who were to be 
lashed naked through the land by the pure and honest hands of 
Isaac Hill and Amos Kendall, were no other than Messrs. Clay, 
Webster, and their principal associates in congress, and that 
their offence is to have recommended in their places the re- 



62 

chartering of the Bank. The paper containing this article is, 
as our readers know, the semi-official organ of the government. 
So much for the right guarantied to members of Congress of 
not being questioned in other places for words spoken in debate 
in either house. The President himself does not scruple to 
lend his personal countenance to this system, and has been 
convicted of publicly retailing, in his tavern conversations, 
durinc- his late journey to the West, the revolting calumnies of 
the Globe. 

Will this assassination of character be much longer tolerated 
by the public opinion of the people of the United States ? Will 
it be much longer borne that all distinctions of right and wrong 
shall thus be habitually reversed, and the most abandoned and 
profligate members of society permitted to fasten publicly upon 
the foreheads of the best and purest, the brand of guilt ? Lay 
what unction we will to our souls, the people are not innocent 
in this matter. We consider it as a proof of a low state of 
civilization in Spain, in Turkey, andin many other countries that 
the roads are not safe : — that the stern decree of public senti- 
ment does not lend force to the law — sweep the cowardly mis- 
creants that infest them from the face of the earth, and enable 
the traveller to pursue his journey in security. The reproach 
is just ; but are not the moral assassins, that prowl through 
every portion of this vast Union, equally criminal, and far more 
cowardly than the cuthroats and cutpurses of the old world ? Is 
it not equally the duty of the public to enforce the now wholly 
ineffectual laws against them, and to declare with a voice too 
clear and loud to be mistaken or disregarded, that THIS 
THING SHALL NOT BE ? Is it not the bounden duty of 
the people to place this odious vice upon the same footing with 
other open offences against morals, which, if they cannot be 
wholly suppressed, are at least compelled to hide their heads .' 
The toleration which public opiliion now extends to slander is 
criminal. We suffer for it in the elevation of corrupt and 
•wicked rulers, which is chiefly brought about by the use of 
this infamous engine. A reform like that which we sugg^est, 
MUST TAKE PLACE. If it do not— if the system is per- 
mitted to go on as it has done for some years past, from bad to 
■worse, the country will become uninhabitable. Men of honor 
and probity will quit a region where they are not secured in the 
best and most valuable of their possessions, character, and seek 
in preference — if they can find no other refuge — the lion-haun- 
ted forests of India, or the cannibal shores of New Zealand. 

In this lowest depth of degradation there is yet a lower deep. 
The proceedings in regard to the Bank indicate more distinctly 



63 

than any other single symptom the fearful and disgraceful fact of an 
irresponsible cabal behind the President's chair, overruling the 
opinion of his known and responsible advisers. Air. McLane 
in his Treasury Report, strongly recommended, as we have 
remarked, the re-chartering of the Bank. The Kitchen Cabinet 
veto the bill : and the Secretary of the Treasury retains his 
commission ! Can the mere charm of holding an office so 
completely bewilder the understandings even of intelligent and 
upright men as to blind them to the plainest dictates of good 
sense and honorable feeling ? Look to the mother country. 
Was there ever a Chancellor of the Exchequer who would have 
kept his place under such circumstances .' Since the President 
preferred the policy of his secret cabinet in regard to the most 
important measures, why did not Mr. McLane resign at once, and 
permit the real Secretary to make his appearance ? We should 
then have seen whether the people would endure the infamy of 
being governed ostensibly, as they are substantially, by Amos 
Kendall and Isaac Hill. 

Such have been the proceedings in regard to the Bank, and 
such the manner in which they have been defended. What 
would be the effect of its destruction .•' It would unsettle the cur- 
rency and carry desolation and bankruptcy through the whole 
Western country. The debt of thirty millions due from that 
section to the Bank CANNOT BE PAID. The attempt to 
enforce it would ruin thousands of our most industrious and 
valuable citizens, and arrest for years the prosperity of the whole 
West. Will the people consent to this for the mere purpose of 
securing to the military chieftain and his partizans the SPOILS 
OF VICTORY for another term .' THEY WILL NOT. 



CHAPTER IX. 

EXPLOSION OF PARTIES.— l^ITCHEN CABIXET. 

In the preceding chapters, we have, agreeably to the plan 
proposed at the commencement of the work, rapidly review- 
ed the character and qualifications of Gen. Jackson and of 
the leading members of his first Administration: — the means 
by which they got possession of the government, and the man- 
ner in which they have administered it. We have seen that 
Jackson is himself entirely deficient in all the talents and ac- 
complishments, required in the office of President of the Uni- 



64 

ted States : — that his personal habits and the events of his pre- 
cedinfT career, rendered him perhaps the only prominent man 
in the cuimtrv, whom it was decidedly dangerous to entrust 
with that office: — that he was elevated to it by a combination 
of i)olitical leaders, who used his name and popularity as ma- 
chinery to advance their own selfish projects, and finally, that 
he has employed the influence it has given him to deprive the 
people of" their most fiiitht'ul and valual)le servants; — to corrupt 
the sources of the national prosperity, and to undermine the 
most important institutions of government. 

It only remains to comment briefly, in conclusion, upon the 
explosion of parties which took place about a year ago in the 
cabinet, on the spirit of the Administration as now constituted, 
and on the means that are in use to sustain the party in power. 

We remarked in one of our first chapters that the original 
Jackson party consisted of three principal divisions, viz. tlie 
personal adherents of the General, and the political 'friends of 
Messrs. Calhoun and Van Buren. The General's own strength, 
as far as he had any, lay in his supposed popularity with the 
great body of voters, and this was the circumstance that in- 
duced the political leaders to attach themselves to his cause. 
The political influence of the party was almost wholly in the 
hands of the friends of Messrs. Calhoun and Van Buren. But 
these, although they had acted together for the immediate pur- 
pose of ejecting Mr. Adams and bringing in Jackson, not only 
had no community of opinion, feeling or interest, but were on 
all essential points at open war with each other. Their views 
on the great questions of internal policy which have almost ex- 
clusively occupied the public attention for three years past, 
were diametrically opposite, and the political pretensions of 
their leaders came directly into collision. Both aspired to suc- 
ceed Gen. Jackson in the Presidency, and neither would ad- 
journ his claims for a single day. It was obvious enough that 
these contradictory elements could not very long co-operate 
harmoniously in the same political party : — that an explosion 
must sooner or later take piace, and that this could not be de- 
ferred beyond the time when the question of the succession 
should come before the people. It was presumed that great 
efforts would be made to preserve unity, until the re-election 
of Jackson should be secured ; and it was thought not improb- 
able, that under a strong sense of common interest and com- 
mon danger, this might be effected. 

Passion, however, proved too strong for policy. In a little 
more than two years the explosion broke out with circum- 
stances of so much violence and scandal, as not only to 



65 

destroy entirely the chance of General Jackson's re-elec- 
tion, and of the success of either of the rivals to the suc- 
cession, but as to endanger very seriously the tranquillity 
and permanence of the Union. The constantly increasing 
zeal with which Mr. Calhoun has continued, liom year to 
year, to urge the doctrine of nullification, must be attribu- 
ted, in part at least, to his disappointment and disgust at find- 
ing himself turned aside by the arts of an every way inferi- 
or competitor, from the high career which he was once pur- 
suing with so fair a prospect of success. — There are {ow strong- 
er examples in history than this, of the irresistible force with 
which the spontaneous and original impulses of our nature 
overmaster all the combinations of art, and sweep down the 
slender barriers by which calculation endeavors to dam them 
up. 

The breach among the SPOILERS had in fact become ir- 
reparable even before they had entered into possession of the 
PLUNDER. The Calhoun leaders — as we have already 
had occasion to remark — were not consulted about the arrange- 
ment of the Administration. Yan Buren assigned to himself 
the lion's share of the spoils, and gave to the other divisions of 
the party such representatives in the cabinet as he thought 
best fitted to promote his own objects. We may well suppose that 
the fiery spirit of the Southern champion did not very patiently 
brook this indignity, but it was deemed expedient to suspend 
an open rupture as long as possible. In his position as Presi- 
dent of the Senate, and in the great superiority of the talents 
of his partisans in Congress, Mr. Calhoun had some advantages 
over his rival, who on the other hand controlled the cabinet and 
the back stairs. It remained to be seen, which of these two 
sorts of influence would preponderate. The two first years of 
the Administration were chiefly occupied with the struggle of 
the two parties for the ' esteem and confidence of Gen. Jack- 
son,' the possession of which the leaders of one of them has 
since publicly declared to be a title of honor sufficient to satisfy 
the most extravagant ambition. 

The history of these two years, carried out fully into all its 
details, as it one day probably will be, would resemble a chap- 
ter in the Scandalous Chronicle of the Greek Empire, or the 
Memoirs of the French Court of the time of Louis XV., and 
treated by a poweril'.l hand with perfect freedom, would be full 
of entertainment and instruction. Nemesis, it is said, is always 
on the watch. It was a singular and even laughable circum- 
stance, that a party which had affected to charge Mr. Adams 
— a man remarkable for a more than republican simplicity of 
9 



66 

manner — with a fondness for etiquette, should have been princi- 
pally occupied for about two years in settling the question, wheth- 
er a particular lady should or should not be received in the fash- 
ionable circles of Washington. To effect her introduction 
seems to have been, as we remarked before, during this period, 
the leading object of the policy of Jackson and Van Buren; 
to prevent it was, on the other hand, the not less constant ef- 
fort of the adherents of Mr. Calhoun. This controversy was 
for the time being the point upon which all the great political 
affairs of the country were made to turn: — Negotiations with 
foreign ministers — correspondence and conversations among 
the members of the cabinet — discussions at the President's 
house — on all occasions, this was the universal topic. If we 
are rightly informed, the only cabinet meeting which was held 
while Van Buren was Secretary of State was occupied with 
the "discussion of this great question. It is foreign to our pur- 
pose to enter into the arguments that were urged on both sides in 
the course of these debates. The sanctuary of private life is not 
to be invaded even for the purpose of supporting a good cause. 
We may remark in general that whatever outward form and 
coloring the controversy may have assumed, it was after all 
substantially po/«7/ca/. The object of Mr. Van Buren was to 
sustain the reputation and influence of Major Eaton, whom ho 
had placed in the cabinet as the representative of the personal 
friends of Jackson, and through whom he expected to exercise 
an indirect influence over the General himself. The object of 
Mr. Calhoun, was of course to counteract this influence, and if 
possible to remove Eaton from Washington. 

In this controvery, Van Buren came off with flying colors. 
Although the fair exclusives of Washington obstinately refused 
to unfold their drawing-room doors at the utterance of the 
executive Open sesame! the President, with equal firmness, re- 
fused to close his in compliment to their scruples, and after a 
hard struggle, continued with unremitted vigor on both sides 
through the long session of '29—30, the MALIGN INFLU- 
ENCE, that is in substance, the influence of Van Buren, was 
found to retain undiminished its original ascendency. It is 
evident, in fact, that while the warfare between the rivals was 
waged upon this ground, the advantage was wholly in favor of 
the Secretary of State. He was in possession of the field. 
He commanded the cabinet, the back-stairs, and the bed-cham- 
ber. His talents, as far as he possesses any, fit him to act upon 
this theatre. His little, narrow, sordid soul is at home in the 
little arts, the little intrigues, the little miserable, mischievous 
monkey tricks, that may be supposed to decide questions in a 



67 

council of chambermaids. The Vice President, on the other 
hand, moved in a sphere entirely aloof from this paltry ma- 
noeuvering. His advantages lay in the superiority of his 
friends in the two Houses of Congress. His and their great 
talents, commanding eloquence, manly firmness and decision 
of character, were all lost in this obscure contest, where the 
only real disgrace was not to be defeated. 

Finding, after a sufficiently long experiment, that there was 
no possibility of dislodging the MALIGN INFLUENCE in a 
quiet way from the councils of the palace, the Vice President, 
with the vigor and boldness that belong to his character, de- 
termined at once upon an open breach. Van Buren had 
secured to himself the entire SPOILS of the VICTORY 
which placed the combined party in power: he was pushing 
for the succession with the full approbation and favor of Jack- 
son. If Mr. Calhoun, for the sake of preserving the unity of the 
party, were to acquiesce in this state of things until after Jack- 
son should be re-elected for another term, the course of public 
opinion would be settled, and his own chance for the succes- 
sion lost forever. There was therefore no other resource left 
to him but to take a stand at once, as he did. Thus \ an 
Buren, by an excess of selfish and treacherous cunning — as 
often happens in this kind of management — overreached him- 
self Had he dealt more openly and fairly with Mr. Calhoun, 
allowed him his full share of influence in the administration, 
waiv(!d for the time his personal views, and confined himself to 
an active discharge of the duties of his department (for which, 
however, he was in all respects totally unqualified,) he would 
probably at this moment have been Secretary of State, with a 
fair prospect of the succession to the Presidency. 

But on what ground was Mr. Calhoun to take his stand for 
the purpose of making a public attack on his rival.' Here lay 
the weakness of his case, and the reason why — although he 
succeeded at once in demolishing his puny antagonist — he 
made no impression upon the people in his own favor. The 
controversy between him and Van Buren was, in substance, a 
quarrel between two political leaders, who considered the of- 
fices of government as the SPOILS OF VICTORY, about 
the division of them. This was obviously a case where the 
people of the United States could not reasonably be expected 
to take much interest in favor of either of the combatants. 
Whether the compact between the two leaders had been fairly 
observed on both sides; — whether the automaton whom they 
employed as the nominal distributer of spoils had done hia 
work impartially between them, and if not, why? — were quea- 



C8 

tions whicli the people hardly thought it worth their while to 
discuss. When they saw Mr. Calhoun publicly take a stand 
against his rival, the real ground for satisfaction was that this 
open breach must necessarily break up the whole machinery 
of the combined party, destroy all chance of the re-election of 
Jackson, as well as of the success of either of the pretenders, 
and afford the people an opportunity of placing in the princi- 
pal offices of government men who do not consider them as 
prizes for which the reckless and profligate are to gamble, 
fight and bully, but as sacred trusts instituted for the public 
good, and which no individual can accept or hold from any 
other motive than regard for the public good, without assum- 
ing a responsibility sufficiently serious to alarm the conscience 
of all but the most hardened and abandoned reprobates. 

The question, however, such as it was between the two 
rivals, was publicly discussed. Why did Gen. Jackson bestow 
his " esteem aud confidence " upon Mr. Van Buren, rather than 
Mr. Calhoun? This interesting inquiry was made the subject 
of various pamphlets, of much correspondence, and of many in- 
terminable newspaper articles. Mr. Calhoun ascertained, as 
he thought, that Van Buren had poisoned the mind of the Gen- 
eral by artful misrepresentations of the part which he had taken, 
as Secretary of War, in the Cabinet discussions upon Jackson's 
conduct towards the Spaniards and the Seminoles. He pub- 
lished a pamphlet containing what he considered the evidence 
of such misrepresentation. The fact was denied by Van Bu- 
ren, who summoned to his aid as v/itnesses Messrs. Crawford, 
Forsyth, Hamilton and others. Mr. Calhoun, on the other 
hand, invoked the testimony of his immediate friends. The 
newspapers were occupied lor months with long statements and 
counter-statements, and the battles of the Seminole war were 
again fought and rcfought a hundred times over. The most 
edifying part of the affair was to see these persons, who had 
all for six years preceding been crying themselves hoarse in 
charging Mr. Adams with a corrupt bargain, now with one ac- 
cord appealing to him as a man in whose integrity and up- 
rightness they could place implicit confidence for testimony in 
support of their respective statements. Mr. Adams, with the 
calm and modest dignity that belongs to his character, supplied, 
without reflection or commentary, the facts that were wanted. 
But the people, as we have said, took little or no interest in the 
discussion, although it was abundantly seasoned throughout 
with the hot spice of scandal. They only saw that their ene- 
mies had come to daggers-drawing among themselves, and, 
without taking much trouble to ascertain what it was all about. 



69 

or which side was most in the wrong, began immediately to 
make preparations for obtaining their own rights, which honest 
men, who have been dispossessed of them, commonly avail 
themselves of such occasions to recover. 

Van Buren, on his side, with the magnanimity and patriotism 
which distinguish all his proceedings, began to look after his own 
interest. Aware of his utter inability to face the Vice Presi- 
dent in an open discussion of any question before the people, 
and also knowing that an open struggle between them would 
be fatal to the imity of the party, he endeavored to prevent it 
by a timely retreat from the field. He accordingly resigned 
his place as Secretary of State, and Mr. McLane having 
been recalled, accepted the post of Minister to England, 
which, as he has since told us, (we have no doubt truly,) 
he intended to occupy for the ' usual period ' of four years. 
His calculation seems to have been to remain abroad over the 
now pending election. If in consequence of his retreat the unity 
of the party should be preserved, and Jackson re-elected, he would 
assume the credit of a magnanimous sacrifice of his own inter- 
est to the good of the party, and use it as an argument in sup- 
port of his pretensions to the succession. If, on the other hand 
— as was more probable — the party should break up completely, 
and Jackson's re-election be defeated, he would still find him- 
self in one of the most conspicuous places in the executive de- 
partment of the government, from which he could watch the 
movement of parties at home, and at a proper season make up 
his mind which was likely to prove ' the Republican party,' or 
in other words, the strongest side. In retiring himself from 
the field, it was important, however, that he should not leave it 
in possession of the enemy ; and, as two at least of his colleagues 
in the Cabinet were devoted to Mr. Calhoun, it was necessary 
to get rid of them, and fill their places with persons on whom 
he could depend. 

Some men would probably have found the operation rather 
embarrassing; but this modest little gentleman possesses, as we 
have already remarked, a patent right to outrage the most emi- 
nent men in the country with impunity: and the privilege ex- 
tends not only to political opponents, but to men of all parties, 
including his own, whenever they are supposed to stand in the 
way of his immediate selfish interest. With the same delicate 
sense of justice and decorum which had marked his deportment 
towards the public functionaries belonging to the preceding Ad- 
ministration, he now turned upon his political friends, and, 
without the slightest pretext or apology, rudely thrust out of the 
highest and most responsible posts of the government the very 



70 

men whom, two years before, he had selected from the whole 
people as the persons most competent to fill them, with about 
the same ceremony as a common citizen would practise in 
changinfT his shoe-black. The form given to this proceeding 
was that of an entire change of the heads of departments. A 
correspondence took place between the retiring or ejected func- 
tionaries and their chief, including several letters of mutual 
explanation among themselves. The reason assigned by Van 
Buren for tendering his resignation was that he nmst either re- 
tire or disfranchise himself, — that is, surrender his claims to the 
Presidency of the United States. In choosing the former part 
of the alternative, he virtually proposes himself to the people as 
a candidate for the succession. The people will of course take 
him at his word. It would be unpardonable to lose the oppor- 
tunity of having ' the sweetest little fellow in the world,' and 
who is evidently as modest and ' innocent as sweet,' at the head 
of the government. 

But why did the other heads of departments quit their places? 
Messrs. Ingham, Eaton, Branch and Berrien were not candi- 
dates for the Presidency. They might have continued without 
disfranchising themselves to hold the offices which they filled, in 
the diplomatic phrase, ' with so much credit to themselves and 
advantage to the country.' Why were they compelled to re- 
tire? The President supplies the reason in one of his letters. 
His ' Cabinet proper ' had been and must continue to be a unit 
— which, done into English, seems to mean that, as the heads 
of departments came into office together, they must all go out 
at the same time. To this there could, of course, be no reply. 
The consequence, to be sure, is not clear, but MUST is a bold 
word, which carries every thing before it, and no doubt suited 
admirably well the southern stomachs of the gentlemen to whom 
it was addressed. Eaton, who was in the secret, came very 
readily into the arrangement — Berrien, Branch and Ingham 
fought hard. The whole scene was at once disgusting, pain- 
ful, and, under certain aspects, irresistibly ludicrous. The 
coarse and blundering style of the correspondence on the part 
of Jackson and Eaton — the mutual defiance and recrimination 
— the challenging — the lying in wait with pistols — in short, all 
the circumstances of this strange transaction, taken together, 
resembled the quarrel among the robbers in Gil Bias about the 
distribution of the spoils, much more than a change in the ad- 
ministration of the government of the " freest and most en- 
liglitened nation of the globe." Mr. Senator Marcy has since 
kindly informed us, in the name of the principal actor, that such 
in fact is, and ought to be, the character of all important politi- 



71 

cal movements. How lofty the standard of civilization which 
admits and even publicly justifies such proceedings! We can- 
not but think that if Chancellor Oxenstiern were now alive, he 
would change the turn of his celebrated instruction to his son, 
and would send him to Washington to see how much wisdom 
and virtue are employed in governing the world. 

Having thus cleared the stage of one set of actors, and filled 
it with another, who enjoyed more of his " esteem and confi- 
dence," Van Buren accepted the appointment of minister to 
London, and sailed for Europe, apparently in the full persuasion 
that the Senate of the United States, containing a majority of 
members from two parties, not only politically opposed to him, 
but of both which he had treated the most prominent men with 
wanton and contemptuous indignity, would, from mere courtesy 
lo him, confirm the nomination. It would be difiicult to find a 
stronger example of the extent to which a complete absorption 
of every other feeling and faculty, in blind devotion to self, can 
obscure the perceptions of a naturally acute mind. We need 
not say how early and how entirely this wise expectation was 
disappointed. The worm that is trodden on, knows how to turn 
— and it was hardly to be supposed that the towering spirits 
from the east and west and south, who are now congregated in 
the Senate, having the power in their hands, would be wholly 
passive under the gratuitous insults which Mr. Van Buren had 
thought proper to bestow upon them and their friends. Inde- 
pendently of his disgraceful instructions to Mr. McLane, which 
rendered it an imperious duly to withdraw him immediately 
from London, his treatment of the public functionaries both of 
the past and present Administration had excluded him entirely 
from the pale of political courtesy. He was accordingly nega- 
tived without ceremony. In his answer to the letter of con- 
dolence addressed to him by some of his New York associates, 
he very gravelv represents his case as an uncommonly hard 
one. That the Representatives of twenty-four sovereign States 
should venture for the weightiest reasons to recal Martin Van 
Buren from a foreign mission is a hard case ; but that Martin 
Van Buren, a little New York lawyer, should, without the 
shadow of any motive but his own personal convenience, recal 
the whole corps of foreign ministers — remove the most valuable 
public servants by hundreds, and finally elbow his own col- 
leagues out of the cabinet, is quite in the ordinary course of 
things. This is really the sublime of self-conceit, and as Na- 
poleon said of the sublime in other cases — comes within a step 
of the ridiculous. Mr. Van Buren's reception on his arrival, 
and the reception of his nomination as Vice President, will 



72 

have partly satisfied him that the People are not much greater 
admirers of Regency politics than the Senate. It does not ap- 
pear however tliat lie is yet entirely roused from his dream of 
delusion. His recent nomination of Mr. SPOILER Marcy 
as the candidate for Governor in New York, if it be not a mere 
bravado, .shows that he is quite insensible to the real state of 
public opinion. — The sentence which the people will pass at 
the close of this month upon that nomination, and at the same 
. time upon his own pretensions to the Vice Presidency, will 
probably open his eyes, or at all events will place him where 
he will be for the rest of his life as harmless, and about as re- 
spectable as his neighbor Aaron Burr has been for the last 
thirty years. 

The course pursued by the Vice President after the breaking 
up of the party was entirely different from that of Van Buren, 
and though sufficiently objectionable on other grounds, has at 
least something manly and generous about it. Instead of act- 
ing on the sauve qui pent principle, and endeavoring to secure 
a provision for himself out of the wreck of the hopes and pros- 
pects of the concern, he has withdravvn himself entirely from 
the struggle for the succession, and after the close of his pre- 
sent official term, will retire to private life. We trust, how- 
ever, that he will appear again in Congress, where the eminent 
and powerful men of all parties naturally find their place, and 
where by meeting each other on the open field of free discus- 
sion, they correct errors, forget local prejudices^ and learn to 
act with a broad and general view to the welfare of the whole 
country. Mr. Calhoun and his immediate friends now profess 
what we deem very erroneous notions on the economical policy 
of the country, and are apparently disposed to give them effect 
by a course of measures repugnant to the constitution, and sub- 
versive of the Union of the States. But in all these cases of 
supposed grievances suffered by particular states or sections, 
the alarm of threatened resistance has always very greatly ex- 
ceeded the real danger. However imprudent may have been 
the language, and to a certain extent the proceedings of the 
Nullifiers, we can never believe that men of so much talent and 
patriotism will ultimately insist that the minority are to rule the 
majority, or v/ill for the promotion of any sectional or personal 
purpose, lay violent hands on the sacred ark of the Union. 
We can easily excuse a little intemperate language where it 
evidently proceeds from the overflowing of an ardent and gen- 
erous temper. We must recollect that the time has been when 
we too were laboring under real or imaginary wrongs, and were 
meditating projects little less violent than those which are now 



73 

agitated in South Carolina. In the generous phrase of Burke : 
JVe must pardon somefhing to the Spirit of Liberty, and we do it 
with cheerfulness. We must and can cheerfully pardon any- 
thing but undisguised and avowed corruption. We deem it a 
fortunate circumstance that the chief direction of the nullifying 
party should be in the hands of Mr. Calhoun. His undoubted 
patriotism will induce him at all hazards to avoid any desperate 
extremity, and his commanding character will give him the in- 
fluence over his tViends which may be wanted for the purpose 
of keeping them within bounds. We have said that his political 
career was at an end ; but we are not sure after all tliat he may 
not be reserved to render very important services to the Union. 
The South has no more prominent citizen to present to the peo- 
ple hereafter as a candidate for the highest marks of confidence 
which they have to bestow ; and if Mr. Calhoun should return 
to Congress, and, imitating the example of Mr. Clay in regard 
to the Missouri question, should act the part of a mediator, and 
employ his authority and talents in settling the questions that 
now disturb the public tranquillity, on any ground of fair and 
honorable compromise, he will find the friends of the country 
in all quarters entirely disposed to acknowledge the service, 
and to join with his immediate partisans in doing him honor as 
a public benefactor. 

Such however were the principal circumstances and imme- 
diate results of the explosion in the Cabinet, which destroyed 
the unity of the Jackson party, and with it all chance of the 
General's re-election, or of the success of either of the pre- 
tenders to the succession. The new cabinet was on the whole 
an improvement on the former one, although each of the mem- 
bers was on different accounts obnoxious to weighty objections. 
3Ir. Livingston is tco old to sustain the buiden of the depart- 
ment of State. Gov. Cass is pledged to the worst doctrines on 
the Indian question. Mr. McLane had allowed himself to be 
made the instrument of the national dishonor at London ; and 
Woodbury had but recently truckled in the basest manner to 
Isaac Hill — a depth of degradation below which no man could 
well wish his worst enemy to descend. Objectionable however 
as they on some accounts were, the people would probably 
have considered the change as a favorable one, had it turned 
out that these men were to be in fact the President's advisers. 
But the course of events soon disclosed the alarming and dis- 
graceful fact that the heads of departments constitute merely 
the formal Government, and that the power is really lodged in 
a secret irresponsible cabal which has since received the ap- 
propriate and characteristic denomination of the KITCHEN 

10 



74 

CABINET. The existence and power of this cabal have been 
apparent ever since the explosion, and have lately been proved 
beyond the possibility of question by the proceedings in regard 
to the Bank. 

The report of the Secretary of the Treasury on this subject 
contained the opinion of the responsible head of the financial 
department ; the Veto Message registers the decree of the se- 
cret council, by which that opinion was reversed. — Hitherto it 
has been deemed the principle of our Government and the se- 
curity of our liberty that wherever there was power there was 
also responsibility. Now the responsible agents of the people 
are paralyzed, and the real power is lodged in hands which the 
people cannot reach. It has deserted the places of business 
of the President's constitutional advisers, and taken up its abode 
in obscure recesses, which the public eye cannot penetrate — 
the bureaux of subaltern clerks or the closets and bed-chambers 
of domestic dependents. In this respect our young Govern- 
ment exhibits at the present moment the worst features of the 
worst and most corrupt governments of the old world. This 
state of things is new and ominous. It deserves the serious 
reflection of every patriotic and well-meaning citizen. 



CHAPTER X. 

SPIRIT OF JACKSONISM.— CONCLUSION. 

In the preceding chapters, we have rapidly reviewed the 
measures by which the present Administration rose to power, 
and have exposed in detail the unconstitutional character and 
ruinous tendency of their principal measures. At the close of 
our last essay, we stated that since the dissolution of the Van 
Buren cabinet, the effective power of the government had been 
lodged in the hands of a secret and irresponsible cabal, some- 
times denominated the Kitchen Cabinet, and the " Cabinet im- 
proper." We propose to notice, in conclusion, the general spirit 
of the Administration as now constituted, and of the party which 
it represents, with the means which they employ to perpetuate 
their influence. 

The spirit of Jacksonism, the most remarkable exhibitions of 
which we have separately examined and characterised, which 
has been distinctly perceptible ever since the formation of the 
Jackson party, and has become, from day to day, more and 



75 

more apparent, especially since the organization of the " im- 
proper Cabinet," is the same that prevailed in France at the 
worst period of the Revolution, and was then known by the 
name of JACOBINISM. As it then existed in France, 
and as it now exists in this country, it may be described as a 
spirit which aims at the subversion of social order and the regu- 
lar and wholesome authority of law, for the purpose of concen- 
trating the whole power of the country in the hands of a single 
ruler. Its Alpha is ANARCHY, and its Omega DESPOT- 
ISM. It addresses itself to the worst passions of the least in- 
formed portion of the people ; — denounces the most valuable 
and salutary institutions as intolerably oppressive, reviles the 
possessors of property, talents, virtue, every thing that gives 
distinction and influence in society, as tyrants and aristocrats; 
— and when by these delusive and maddening appeals it has 
brought the people to acts of open violence, and broken down 
the existing forms of government, it erects upon their ruins a 
throne for the boldest pretender, commonly some daring and 
reckless military chieftain, who happens to be at hand at the prop- 
er moment to take possession of it. This spirit was long ago de- 
nounced by the great English apostle of the Rights of Man, un- 
der the name of LICENSE. 

License they mean when they cry Liberty ; 

For who means (hat, must first mean wise and good. 

It is a sort of political disease, naturally incident to free gov- 
ernments, because it is the result of the excess or abuse of Lib- 
erty. It has repeatedly frustrated the fairest prospects of polit- 
ical improvement. At the period of the first English Revolu- 
tion, it deluged the island of Great Britain in blood, and sub- 
stituted for a well-regulated and orderly commonwealth, the 
reign of violence, under the various names of the Long Parlia- 
ment, Cromwell, and the Stuarts. In France it engendered the 
brood of political and military agitators, who have for the last 
half century kept that country, and to a considerable extent the 
whole of Europe, in a state of uproar, and prevented the intro- 
duction of the liberal constitutions which were called for by the 
improved civilization of the age. In this country we have oc- 
casionally seen some symptoms of it, but it has always been 
promptly checked by the strong good sense and patriotic feel- 
ing of the people; and although under a concurrence of pecu- 
liar circumstances, it has obtained a temporary ascendancy for 
the last three years, the body politic is evidently too healthy to 
allow it to prevail for a very long time. Already we see in 
every quarter the signs of a vigorous and general reaction, 
which is destined, we trust, within a few weeks to expel it from 



76 

the system, and to prostrate forever the imbecile and superan- 
nuated despot who has been put forward as its personal repre- 
sentative. 

In this poHtical disease, wherever it has occurred, there have 
been, as we have said, two distinct tendencies — one towards 
disorganization and anarchy, the other towards despotism and a 
concentration of the whole power of society in the hands of a 
single ruler. The former is generally more observable in the 
earlier and the latter in the later stages of the malady, but they 
exist together, and develope themselves as circumstances hap- 
pen to furnish occasion. 13oth these tendencies have been dis- 
tinctly visible in the operations of Jacksonism. We have seen 
it encouraging the encroachments of the States on the Federal 
Government, denying the National Legislature all their most 
important powers, openly defying the authority of the Supreme 
Court, and encouraging the States to do the same; endeavor- 
ing, in a word, to bring back the present Constitution to the 
imbecility of the Old Confederation. We have seen it attempt- 
ing to array the poor against the rich, denouncing the posses- 
sion of property, talents, distinction of any kind, under the 
name of aristucrarj/, as an unpardonable crime, and straining 
every nerve to place the whole political influence in the hands 
of those, who for want of education and good moral qualities, 
are the least qualified to exercise it. Such are the proofs of 
the disorganizing and anarchical tendency of Jacksonism. On 
the other hand, we see but too plainly in tlie violent and ar- 
bitrary conduct of the chief, and in the servile complaisance — 
the insane man-worship of his flatterers — the evidences of a 
tendency to strengthen the Executive branch ofthe Government, 
which, if appearances were in other respects less favorable than 
they are, would justly excitethe most serious alarm for the per- 
manence of our institutions. 

We have had occasion in the preceding essays to dwell at 
considerable length upon some of the principal measures by 
which the party have attempted to disorganize the government, 
and substitute a wild anarchy for the beautiful and admirable 
system of social order contained in the Federal Constitution. 
The arbitrary tendency of Jacksonism is not less worthy of 
consideration. Since the organization of the " Cabinet im- 
proper," and especially during the late session of Congress, it 
has displayed itself ahuost without disguise. In the appoint- 
ment of Gvvinn, the President wrested trom the Senate their 
constitutional share ofthe appointing power, and if this case is 
to be regarded as a precedent, has taken into his own hands the 
whole of that most important branch of the government. He 



77 

arbitrarily returned the bill which granted interest to Maine and 
Massachusetts on the advances they had made during the war, 
while he approved that which gave the same allowance to South 
Carolina. He openly claims the right of executing or not execu- 
ting, at discretion, the very laws which he has himself approved. 
He declares himself, in terms, entirely independent of the Su- 
preme Court. He nullifies of his own mere motion a whole 
series of solemn treaties concluded with the Indian tribes, and 
the Intercourse Law, which makes it his duty to sustain these 
treaties, if necessary, by military force. He does in fact substan- 
tially what his own caprice happens to suggest, without the 
slightest regard to the letter or spirit of the constitution. 

In the mean time, what is the language of the partizan prints? 
Are the soi-disant champions of State Rights and democr:icy 
alarmed at these undisguised and almost avowed usurpations of 
power by the Federal Executive? Quite the contrary. The 
persons who are clamoring most loudly against the encroach- 
ments of the Federal Government, and tlie influence of Aristo- 
cracy, are the same who justify and applaud every act of Gen- 
eral Jackson. These same persons aie constantly loading him 
with the grossest and most fulsome flattery. Napoleon at the 
height of his greatness did not receive more abject adulation 
than is daily lavished upon the imbecile automaton who is 
now the nominal head of our Government. The Globe tells 
us that he was BORN TO COMMAND. The Indiana Times 
assures us that he takes great interest in the welfare of his 
SUBJECTS. Mr. Van Buren thinks that the GLORY of 
acting under his orders, is enough to satisfy the most extrava- 
gant ambition. Finally, a late Ohio paper, after inveighing 
severely against the two opposition parties for having had the 
temerity to form a coalition in that State, as they have done else- 
where against a common enemy, remarks that " a republican 
form of government is quite too mild and lenient " for such 
offenders, and that " the despotic laws of a CROMWELL and 
a ROBESPIERRE would mete out no more than justice to 
such a combination of men ! ! ! " 

The meaning of this seems to be clear. We understand 
it to be, that if the party cannot retain the SPOILS OF VIC- 
TORY in any other way, they will be fully justified in abolish- 
ino- the present republican form of government, and investing 
the man who was BORN TO COMMAND, with the dicta- 
torial authority of a CROMWELL or a ROBESPIERRE. 

Nor, extravagant as it may appear to some, do we consider 
the apprehension of an attempt at such a change in the charac- 
ter of the Government, as by any means chimerical. Should 



78 

General Jackson be re-elected, it can scarcely be doubted 
that the troubles in the Southern States will assume, under his 
capricious and violent management, a more serious shape than 
they now wear, and it is altogether probable that they will put on 
the form of actual rebellion against the Government. In that 
case, the President will be called upon as commander in chief 
of the army to suppress the insurrection. The movement of 
troops for this purpose would constitute the commencement of 
a CIVIL WAR, of which the progress and conclusion are 
beyond the reach of conjecture or prophecy. We only know 
that in preceding cases of the same description, the military 
commanders who have acquired distinction and influence, have 
frequently abused it for the purpose of usurping an arbitrary 
dominion over the whole or a part of their fellow-citizens. Is 
there any thing in the character of Gen. Jackson or his principal 
partizans, which should lead us to suppose that he would shrink 
from making, or they from supporting him in a similar attempt.'' 
Will any sober rnan undertake to say that he should consider 
the tranquillity of the country as perfectly secure, if he heard 
that Jackson was returning in triumph at the head of a victori- 
ous army from a successful campaign in South Carolina.'' Is 
it at all improbable that he might be induced to employ violent 
measures against the Nullifiers, when moderate and legal ones 
would have been sufficient, for the express purpose of obtain- 
ing a pretence for developing a military power, to be after- 
wards employed for other objects.'' For ourselves, without 
intending to excite unnecessary alarm, or to attach undue con- 
sequence to contingent evils, we are yet free to confess that 
we agree entirely in the sentiment so powerfully expressed by 
Mr. Webster, at Worcester — that the greatest danger connect- 
ed with Nullification may perhaps after all result from meas- 
ures adopted by the General Government for its suppression. 
JNot that we believe that an attempt of the kind now supposed 
could possibly succeed. We know too well the dauntless 
courage and unconquerable spirit of liberty that distinguish 
our countrymen, to imagine that any portion of them would 
ever acquiesce for a moment in a violent assumption of politi- 
cal power by a military leader. The granite rocks of New 
England would stoop from their deep foundations to do hom- 
age to a Usurper, as soon as the hardy and noble-minded men 
who inhabit them. But the mere attempt would be the signal 
for internal discord, and would form the commencement of a 
series of troubles, which, however it might terminate, would 
destroy the tranquillity and prosperity of the people for at least 
one generation — perhaps forever. 



79 

Such are the tendencies and spirit of Jacksonism. — ANAR- 
CHY and social disorganization at the outset — Military usur- 
pation and DESPOTISM at the close. — The means which 
the party employ to perpetuate their influence, have been ad- 
verted to in detail, from time to time, in the course of these re- 
marks, and may be here briefly recapitulated in a few words. 
They are principally two. 

1 . The abuse of the patronage of the Government for the 
purpose of controlling the freedom of elections. 

2. The abuse of the Press. 

1. ABUSE OF PATRONAGE. This, our readers re- 
collect, was charged upon the preceding Administration by 
General Jackson, and the reform of this supposed abuse was 
declared by himself to be one of his principal objects and du- 
ties. The charge, as made by him, was grossly and notoriously 
false. During the administration of Mr. Adams there had been 
no removals from office for political opinions. The Secretary of 
State had not even thousht it worth his while to take the busi- 
ness of publishing the laws from political opponents, for the 
purpose of giving it to political friends. Two or three isolated 
cases in which this had been done for other reasons, were the only 
pretences which the partizan newspapers could tind for the fac- 
tious and senseless clamor, which they raised upon this subject. 
But the making of the charge, and the public declaration by 
Jackson that he considered the reform of this supposed abuse 
as one of his principal duties, increased, if possible, the strength 
of the obligation which he was under before, to keep his own 
conduct in this respect entirely clear of reproach and suspi- 
cion. How this obligation has been observed, we have already 
seen. It had been given out beforehand, by his partizans, that 
Jackson would REWARD HIS FRIENDS AND PUN- 
ISH HIS ENEMIES. The first acts of his administration 
were a general sweep from oflSce of all the functionaries, high 
and low, who were not his partizans, and the appointment of 
others who were so to take their places. Finally, it has been 
publicly avowed within a few months upon the floor of the 
Senate of the United States, by one of the leaders of the party, 
the immediate friend of Van Buren, and his candidate for 
Governor of New York, that it is perfectly right and proper, 
that the offices of Government should be distributed by the 
President among his political partizans, as the SPOILS OF 
VICTORY. — The party not only sacrifice without scruple 
all regard for consistency and principle, but have at length 
lost all sense of shame, and openly confess and triumph in their 
infamy. 



80 

The subaltern leaders are about as scrupulous and consist- 
ent as the principals. Amos Kendall, for example, when he 
entered on his office as Fourth Auditor of the Treasury, deemed 
it an abuse of the patronage of Government, for the purpose of 
controlling the freedom of elections, even to subscribe for a po- 
litical newspaper, and actually made a great parade about stop- 
ping one or two which, as he said, had been taken at the public 
expense, by his predecessor. He considered it his duty to keep 
himself aloof from politics, and attend exclusively to the busi- 
ness of his office. From the tone of his letter to the editor of 
the Baltimore Patriot, one would have supposed that he would 
hardly feel himself at liberty to look into a newspaper. Not 
long after this immaculate and scrupulous patriot became, as 
he has been ever since, and is now, one of the principal writers 
in the Washington Globe, the semi-official organ of the party, 
and in point of style the most scurrilous paper, with the excep- 
tion, perhaps, of the New Hampshire Patriot, that has ever 
been published in this country. This is not all. Within a kw 
weeks, this very Kendall, whose delicacy would not permit him 
to subscribe for or even read the newspapers, wrote circular 
letters under the frank of his office, to his correspondents 
throughout the Western country, for the purpose of urging 
them to make all possible efforts to extend the circulation of 
the Extra Globe. The letters have been published, and are 
not only not denied but openly avowed and justified by their 
author, who, in the way of candor, seems to have taken a leaf 
out of the book of Mr. Senator Marcy. 

So much for the consistency and purity of Jacksonism, and 
so much tor the reform of the abuse of" bringing the patronage 
of Government into conflict with the purity of elections." The 
degree to which this abuse is now carried by the Administration, 
and the extent of the influence which they exercise by means 
of it, are apparent. Consider the effect in the Post Office only. 
It has been calculated that the whole amount of the salaries paid 
to Postmasters, is from three to four hundred thousand dollars, 
distributed through the country in moderate sums, mostly from 
a hundred to a thousand dollars each. Notwithstanding the 
honorable resistance made by Judge McLean, which cost him 
his place, the principle was introduced at the very opening of 
the Administration of regarding the whole of this immense sum 
as a fund for maintaining and extending the influence of the 
party. The reward and punishment principle was immediately 
applied in this department as in all the others. The conse- 
quence was, that the party now possess in every considerable 
city, town and village throughout the Union, a salaried agent, 



81 

holding his place on the tenure of party fidelity, invested with 
the franking privilege, and with the official inspection and su- 
perintendence of the whole correspondence of the people. At 
this moment, every Postmaster in the country is, ex officio, an 
agent for the Washington Glohe, and is employing the machine- 
ry of the department, as far as he is able to control it, for the 
purpose of extending the circulation of the odious tissue of ma- 
lignity, slander, and falsehood which is issued in the extra num- 
bers of that journal. 

Does not every one feel that this single fact is enough of it- 
self to vitiate entirely the freedom of the election? If with all 
these disadvantages against them the people do in fact succeed 
in defeating the re-election of Jackson, as we have now reason 
to hope and believe that they will, it will undoubtedly be the 
strongest proof of the irresistible effect of a general reaction of 
feeling against notorious and avowed political profligacy, which 
has yet been furnished in the history of this or perhaps any 
other country. 

2. ABUSE OF THE PRESS. The other principal means 
by which the party maintain, as it was also the principal one 
by which they acquired their ascendancy, is the abuse of the 
Press. We have more than once adverted particularly to this 
subject in the preceding chapters. The period that has elapsed 
since the inauguration of President Jackson may be called em- 
phatically the REIGN OF SLANDER. Never before, 
perhaps, has a case occurred in the history of the civilized 
world, in which the laws intended for the protection of personal 
rights have been so openly and systematically set at defiance, 
and have proved in practice so entirely inadequate to their ob- 
ject. A hundred presses make it their daily and regular em- 
ployment to calumniate every individual who dares to make 
himself in any way conspicuous as an opponent of Jackson. 
The most important public services, the purest and most ele- 
vated private character, instead of affording any protection 
against this system of moral assassination, only seem to invite 
and direct the blow. Presidents Madison and Adams, Chief 
Justice Marshall, Chancellor Kent, Bishop White, Messrs. 
Clay, Sergeant, Webster, Frelinghuysen, Wirt; all the ablest, 
best and most justly respected men among us, are daily libelled 
in the foulest and grossest manner. Dark insinuations, — direct 
and open falsehood — forgery — are employed in turn as they hap- 
pen to be thought most likely to effect the immediate purpose. 
An appeal to the courts of justice affords no redress. The 
people, by listening for a course of years to this constant strain 
of calumny and scandal, have become so much accustomed to 

11 



82 

it, that they have in some degree lost their sensibility to the 
value of character, and public opinion no longer lends to the 
law on this subject that sanction, without which all laws are a 
dead letter. The consequence is, that few attempts are made 
to enforce it, and the inconvenience of being constantly ca- 
lumniated in the newspapers, is considered as a sort of tax which 
every citizen must expect to pay, who devotes himself conscien- 
tiously and firmly to the service of his country. 

The extent to which this system of slander is carried, has 
been in some instances curiously and almost ludicrously shown 
by the unconscious admission of the slanderer. We alluded 
in one of our preceding essays, to an article which appeared 
in the Washington Globe under the head of Political Moralihj, 
in which Messrs. Clay, Webster, and their principal associates 
in Congress were politely described as rascals, who ought to be 
lashed naked through the country — they having, it seems, been 
guilty of the enormous offence of supporting, in the regular dis- 
charge of their official duty, the bill for re-chartering the Bank. 
The editor of the Boston Courier copied verbatim a great part 
of this chapter, with such change of language as made it apply 
to Gen. Jackson and his principal retainers. Immediately the 
New York Evening Post, and the other leading Jackson presses 
raised a tremendous outcry against the indecency of the oppo- 
sition press ! ! ! 

Another fact evinces singularly enough, the utter reck- 
lessness with which the hired dealers carry on their trade 
of calumny. About a year ago there appeared in the North 
American Review, an article upon the state of political af- 
fairs in England, which was afterwards republished at London 
under the title of the Prospect of Reform, and was received 
with a good deal of attention. Of all the essays that have 
been written upon the subject, this was perhaps the most 
democratic in its tendency. It went to show that the natural 
result of the present movements would be a subversion of the 
monarchical and aristocratical features of the British constitu- 
tion, and the substitution for it of a republican government on 
the model of our own. This result was spoken of as not only 
natural but desirable and expedient. The article was accord- 
ingly quoted by the opponents of reform in Parliament, and in 
the journals, as containing an admission, by the friends of the 
measure, that such were its tendency and probable results. 
One would hardly have supposed that the publication of the 
most democratic article that had appeared upon this question 
would be regarded as a proof of aristocracy. Such however 
was the fact. No sooner did the Jackson editors perceive that 



83 

the article had been quoted by the British Tories, than, without 
stopping to ascertain the purpose, or to read the paper, they 
forthwith denounced the Review as aristocratic, and declared 
that the proprietors were in the pay of the British aristocracy. 
ii Satan should quote Scripture for his purpose. Scripture would 
no doubt become in the opinion of these writers a very diabol- 
ical matter. 

Forgery, as we have said, is one of their habitual instru- 
ments. The readers of this journal have within the last week 
had occasion to notice the exposure of a most base and fla- 
grant attempt of this kind, by Mr. Jeremiah Mason, lately a 
distinguished Senator in Congress from New Hamoshire. But 
we have neither space nor inclination to enlarge any further 
upon the details of this disgusting topic. 

If in any considerable town or village in this country it were 
suddenly discovered that there was a building which was em- 
ployed as the rendezvous of a gang of miscreants, who habitually 
sallied out from It, to attack the persons and plunder the prop- 
erty of the inhabitants, what would be the consequence? The 
whole community would be in an uproar: — all ordinary business 
would be suspended: — every active and patriotic citizen would 
consider his person, his time, his labor, all his means and 
faculties as in requisition for the public service, until the 
nuisance should be abated. At the present moment, there are in 
every considerable city and village in the Union one or more 
buildings employed as the rendezvous of a company of persons 
who make it their daily and habitual business to attack ihe 
citizens in their reputations — a possession far more dear to 
every honorable man than his person or his purse. These 
companies of calumniators are banded together and form an 
association that pervades the whole Union. Encouraged by 
the criminal toleration of the public, they have the boldness to 
call themselves a political party — they nominate candidates for 
public offices. At the last election they actually succeeded in 
choosing a President of the United States. Andrew Jackson 
is the personal representative of this confederacy, and the pe- 
riod of his administration may, as we have said, be justly de- 
scribed, and will be known in the history of the country as the 
JREIGN OF SLANDER. 

What then is the duty under such circumstances of well- 
meaning citizens? Is a state of public opinion, which tolerates 
the open invasion of private rights, of the most important and 
essential character, sound and healthy? Are the people inno- 
cent in this matter? No. We have already said, and we re- 
peat that the toleration of calumny and slander is the 



84 

crying sin of the nation. IT MUST BE REFORMED. 

The Press must be purified, or the country is lost. Whatever 
may be the result of the present contest; whether we are, 
doomed to endure for another four years the sway of Jackson, 
or whether we succeed in placing the Government in the hands 
of upright and patriotic men, it is equally the bounden and im- 
perative duty of the real friends of the country to strike at the 
root of the evil, by reforming the existing abuses of the Press. 
Let it be understood that character is not to be outraged with 
impunity, any more than person or property. Let it be under- 
stood that the slanderer is to suffer in his person and property 
the appropriate legal punishment for slander, and that this 
is to take place steadily, uniformly, regularly, in every instance 
until the plague is stayed. Let citizens of weight, influence 
and principle, those who take the lead with so much honor and 
success ill other philanthropic and patriotic enterprises, put 
their hands to this great work, and it may easily be done. If 
it be not, we shall have no security, should we even put a 
temporary period to the present misrule, against the early re- 
currence of a similar one, and the standard of civilization will 
be gradually degraded, until the country will no longer be a 
suitable residence for men of correct feelings and upright 
character. 

Such are the two principal means by which the Administra- 
tion endeavor to maintain their influence — the abiise of jmiron- 
age, and the ahjtse of the press. — There is yet a third, more 
odious and alarming than either of these; too revolting to be 
long dwelt upon, but which ought not to be wholly passed 
over in a view of the conduct of our present rulers, and that 
is 

3. PERSONAL INTIMIDATION.— We have said that the 
period which has elapsed since the usurpation of Jackson might 
be called vith propriety the REIGN OF SLANDER:— the last 
year has be<^n, without a metaphor, and in the direct and literal 
meaning of ihe term — especially at the seat of Government — 
the REIGN OF TERROR. It was predicted, by Mr. Sena- 
tor Benton, long before the election of General Jackson, that 
if he were ever made President, the Representatives of the 
People would be compelled in self-defence to go armed. The 
prediction has been verified to the letter. During the last 
session of Congress, no member who dared to lift up his voice 
with freedom against the abuses of the Government, felt himself 
secure for a day from personal violence. One was actually 
assaulted for words spoken in debate, and on appealing for 
redress to the House of Representatives, obtained from the 



85 

party majority a mockery of justice that rendered the injury 
still more galling and outrageous. Another member was at- 
tacked upon the steps of the Capitol, and only succeeded by 
superior physical strength and dexterity in saving his life from 
the most imminent peril. So notorious was the countenance 
given to these outrages by the party majority, that Mr. Arnold 
did not even think it worth his while to lay his case before 
the House. When a third member who had been challenged 
for words spoken in debate appealed for protection to the 
House, the party majority coolly passed to the^order of the 
day. In a fourth case, whefl a member was personally outraged 
on the floor of the House, the matter was passed over without 
the least notice. Towards the close of the session, the seat of 
Government became in a word a sort of bear-garden: — challen- 
ges, duels and personal assaults, were the order of the day: — 
bludgeons, sword-canes, and pistols, had taken the place of all 
other arguments. In the mean time, the President, who, to use 
his own language, knows how ' to look with complacency on 
blood and carnage ' — heard with apparent satisfaction the re- 
port of these proceedings, and coolly remarked that a FEW 
MORE INSTANCES OF THIS KIND WOULD TEACH 
THE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BE MORE 
GUARDED IN THEIR EXPRESSIONS. If the People 
are as intelligent as we believe them to be, it will not require 
a few more instances, nor a few more speeches of this kind to 
teach them, — however they may differ in opinion upon some 
other questions, — who ought NOT to be President of the Uni- 
ted States. 

We have now completed, according to our feeble ability, the 
task, which, with much reluctance and under a strong sense of 
public duty, we had imposed upon ourselves. No individual can 
be more strongly impressed than we are with the importance of 
maintaining social order, and, as one of the means for effect- 
ing this end, of giving, on suitable occasions, a fair and candid 
support to the persons who are invested, for the time being, 
with the administration of the Government. But when these 
very persons, the selected and sworn guardians of social order, 
are themselves its principal enemies, and employ their official 
influence to break down the institutions upon which its preser- 
vation chiefly depends, it then becomes the bounden duty of 
every well-meaning citizen to oppose their continuance in 
power. Towards the present incumbent in the chief magistra- 
cy we have no unfriendly feelings, excepting such as have been 
excited by his conduct in the administration. Up to the time 



86 

of his election to the Presidency, we had entertained a more 
favorable opinion of him than was perhaps common among ju- 
dicious men, and had publicly defended some of his proceed- 
ings which were considered obnoxious to serious objections, 
but which admitted, as we thought, a better construction. 
We regarded his elevation as a most dangerous experiment ; 
but we indulged a hope that the evil might not turn out so 
great as was generally expected. His administration has not 
merely disappointed the faint hopes of doubtful friends, but 
more than realized the worst apprehensions of his worst ene- 
mies. His election has proved, what some who are now his 
strongest political partizans foretold that it would be, a curse to 
the counlry; and, if repeated for another term, will in all proba- 
bility be its ruin. We have made such feeble efforts as lay in 
our power to avert this catastrophe. We are aware how entire- 
ly ineffectual any thing that we can say or do must be in deter- 
mining the political movements of this great people; but if the 
arguments which have been urged in these remarks shall have 
made an impression upon the minds of a ^ew readers only, they 
may not, in the present divided state of the country, be entirely 
without some practical effect. With the fullest conviction of 
their justice and importance, we submit them to the consider- 
ation of our fellow-citizens, of whom we now respectfully take 
our leave. 



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